The Fenian Movement

Unread and unopened! (Hard to list as New when it's 52 years old) 2 tiny spots on top page edges. See photo. It is hard to find an American history textbook in these times which devotes more than a sentence or two to the stormy episode of the latter 19th century known as the Fenian Movement. Some books do not give it even this much space, while others hastily dispose of the event with appallingly narrow and contemptuous gestures. Mabel Gregory Walker has rescued the stirring and tumultuous story from misrepresentation with her engaging volume, THE FENIAN MOVEMENT. A serious and copiously documented study, it is nevertheless written in a beautifully simple style, with more than one touch of quiet, wry humor. The Fenian Movement concerns the efforts of Irishmen both in Ireland and the United States to bring about an independence revolution in Ireland, and, failing that, to launch a move to carve an Irish Republic out of part of Canada. Though the hulk of the action concerns the half-dozen years following the American Civil War, Mrs. Walker has placed the story in thorough perspective and given generous attention to the early stirrings of Fenianism as well as the fierce personality and factional clashes which lit up the movement from start to finish. The complicated foreign politics of the Fenian upheaval, which enmeshed the United States, England, Ireland and Canada, is of special interest, and given particular stress by Mrs. Walker. In fact, the embroilment of major states in small nation and colonial politics in modern times in many ways has a preview of a sort in this example of a century ago. Hardcover with dust jacket, 215pp.…