Soldiers of Liberty: A Study of Fenianism 1858-1908

* This volume, which includes completely original material, will be of interest to local and national historians. * The detail and depth of the information in this book will make it an invaluable resource for researchers and libraries. * Families from each townland are listed in detail. * Strong regional interest and up to 100 photos included. * Special emphasis and investigation on the role of women during this time, a previously underappreciated group. Based on extensive archival research, this fascinating monograph rescues from obscurity the lives over a thousand Fenians. Fenianism railed against the depopulation of a post-Famine Ireland, asserting the rights of ordinary people in defiance of the British Empire, then often supported by the emergent Catholic middle class. As a tenacious conspiracy, represented in these islands by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Fenianism propagated an independent, egalitarian republic through travelling organizers and radical newspapers, inspired by the ideals of Theobald Wolfe Tone. Soldiers of Liberty traces the secret organization throughout Ireland, Britain, North America and Australasia, highlighting the contribution of Fenian women and the often tragic lives of committed activists, while revealing the hitherto-unknown fate of ubiquitous informers enlisted by Dublin Castle.

Reviews of Soldiers of Liberty: A Study of Fenianism 1858-1908

'Eva O Cathaoir's panoramic survey is the first comprehensive scholarly account of the movement from secretive beginning on St Patrick's Day 1858 to enigmatic end in the mid-1920s. Rejecting depictions of Fenianism as mere "pastime", all she demands of the reader is that it be taken seriously. She succeeds brilliantly in showing that most historians have underestimated the "soldiers of liberty" as, in the end, the authorities did. Her comprehensive history of the bold Fenian men will be seen as an important landmark. It will also prove an invaluable source-book, thanks not least to its short biographies of a thousand Munster and Kilkenny Fenians and its resonant and comprehensive list of "our Fenian dead".' -CORMAC O'GRADA, author of Black '47 and Beyond (Princeton, 1999) and Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce (Princeton, 2006).