Life
1798-1886 [Dr. R. R. Madden], b. 20 Aug., 9 Wormwood Gate, Dublin; priv.
ed.; apprentice to Dr Woods, Athboy; studied in Paris, London, Naples;
Near East, 1824-27; Jamaica as Special Magistrate to abolish slavery in
Jamaica, 1833; resigned 1834; posts in Havana, 1836-40, and Africa, 1841-43;
correspondent Morning Chronicle, Lisbon, 1843-47; colonial sec.
West Australia; sec. Loan Fund Board, Dublin, 1850-80; the great work
of his life was The United Irishmen, Their Lives and Times (7 vols.
1842-46), followed by Literary Remains of The United Irishmen (1846),
which, though an adulatory rather than a scholarly monument of the leaders,
established the nationalist tradition in relation to the Rebellion of
1798; issued Irish Periodical Literature, 2 vols. (1847), intending
a third; assisted Anne Devlin, whom he found in poverty in the Liberties
in Dublin, and saw to her reinterrment in 1851, after her death and burial
as a pauper in his absence from the country; d. 3 Vernon Terrace, Booterstown,
Co. Dublin, 5 Feb.; manuscript materials for his Irish Periodical Literature
held in Pearse St. Library, Dublin; those for his history of the United
Irishmen, held in TCD [gift of T. W. Moody]; the ‘Manuscripts of
Dr R. R. Madden’ are held in the Sir John Gilbert Collection, Dublin
City Library, Pearse St., Dublin, as MSS Nos. 263-285. JMC DIB DIW
DIH RAF OCIL
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Works
Life and Times of Robert Emmet (1840; James Duffy 1847), 343pp.;
The United Irishmen: Their Lives and Times (var. edns. 1846; 1858;
1887); Literary Remains of The United Irishmen (1846; 1887) being
the 4th series and 7th vol. of the foregoing]; The Infirmities of Genius
(1833); A 12 Months Residence in the West Indies (1835); An
Address on Slavery in Cuba (1840); Egypt and Mohammed Ali (1841);
The Connexion between Kingdom of Ireland and the Crown of England
(1845); Historical Notice of the Penal Laws against Roman Catholics
(1847; also as History of the Penal Laws, 1865); The Island
of Cuba (1849); History of Irish Periodical Lit. from the end of
the XVIIth to the middle of the XIXth century, 2 vols. (London:
T. C. Newby 1847), Vol. I, v+338pp.; Vol. II, 531pp., and Do.,
rep. (NY: Johnson Rep. Corp. 1968); Literary Life and Correspondence
of the Countess of Blessington (1855); Galileo and the Inquisition
(1863); History of Irish Periodical Literature, 2 vols. (1867);
and material for a History of the Rising of 1798, later edited by
J. Bowles Daly as Ireland in ‘98 [n.d.]; The Memoirs of
R. R. Maddden [chiefly autbiographical, from 1798 to 1886 (1891);
Antrim and Down in ‘98, the lives of Henry Joy McCracken, et al.
(Glasgow 189?) [Various sources].
Editions of The United Irishmen
1] The United Irishmen, Their Lives and Times, 1st series in 2 vols, (London 1842); 2nd series in 2 vols. (London 1843); 3rd series in 3 vols. (Dublin 1846); revised ed. in 4 vols. (Dublin 1857-60) [thus cited in C. J. Woods, ed., Journals and Memoirs of Thomas Russell, 1791-1795, Dublin: IAP 1991].
2] The United Irishmen: Their Lives and Times [1st series], 2 vols. (Dublin: Madden 1842); Do. [2nd series], 2 vols. (Dublin: Madden 1843); Do. [3rd series], 2 vols. (Dublin: Madden 1846), and Do. [4th series], as Literary Remains of The United Irishmen, 1 vol. (Dublin: Madden 1846), coming to 7 vols. in all; Do., re-issued in 4 vols. (Dublin: Madden MDCCCLVIII [1858]), with an author’s preface signed 1857; Do. [2nd edn.], 4 vols. (Dublin: James Duffy 1887), incl. Literary Remains of The United Irishmen as Vol. 4 (1887), xix, 360pp.
3] Vincent Fleming O’Reilly, ed., The United Irishmen: Their Lives and Times (NY Catholic Publication Society of America, 1916), 1-12 vols. [cited in Cheryl Herr, For the Land they Loved, 1991].
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Criticism
Leon Ó Broin, ‘R. R. Madden, Historian of the United
Irishmen,’ in Irish University Review (Spring 1972), pp.20-33.
Thomas Bartlett, et al., The 1798 Rebellion: A Bicentennial Perspective (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2003).
C. J. Woods, ed., Journals and Memoirs of Thomas Russell 1791-5 (IAP 1991), refers to Madden with muted admiration as an enthusiastic collector of matters relating to the United Irishmen.
C. L. Falkiner writes, in Papers relating to Ireland (1909), p.40.
R. F. Foster, ‘Remembering 1798’, in The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland (Penguin 2001), p. 215.
Anna Kinsella, ‘The Nineteenth-century Interpretation of 1798’ UCD M.Litt 1992; Foster p.215.)
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Notes
D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges
Figgis 1912), lists Poems by a Slave in the Island of Cuba recently
liberated from Spanish [Rule] (London 1841); Breathings
of Prayer [priv.; 20 copies] (Havana 1838); ed., The Easter Offering
(1850; rep. Dublin 1888); ‘A Hudibrastic Poem’ [unpublished];
also Lives of the United Irishmen (7 vols. 1842-46); Life of
Lady Blessington (3 vols); History of the Penal Laws (1847);
Literary Remains of the United Irishmen (1888); and History
of Irish Periodical Literature (2 vols, 1867); contrib. to The nation
as ‘Ierne’, and to The Citizen as RRM, 1842-43; his verse appears
mainly in Literary Remains of the United Irishmen and his Memoirs
(1891), ed. by his son, a well-known dublin physician; poetry includes
‘the Bishop of Ross’.
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic Univ. of America 1904), gives extracts from Memoirs of the Countess of Blessington. See also Irish Book Lover 4, 6, 13, 17.
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), calls him an ‘indefatiguable defender of the oppressed’.
Henry Boylan, A Dictionary of Irish Biography [rev. edn.] (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1988) and Brian Cleeve & Ann Brady, A Dictionary of Irish Writers (Dublin: Lilliput 1985), both cite United Irishmen, Their Lives and Times, 7 vols. (1843-46) and cf. the more commonly cited dates 1842-46.
Library of Herbert Bell (Belfast) holds MADDEN (Richard R), The United Irishmen Their Lives And Times, First Series 2nd Edn., (Dublin 1857), Second Series 2nd Edn. (Dublin 1858); Third Series 2nd Edn. (Dublin 1860); Fourth Series 2nd Edn. (Dublin 1860); also The United Irishmen, Third Series in 3 vols. (Vol 1, Dublin 1846, Vol II 1846, Vol III [missing]).
Belfast Linenhall Library lists United Irishmen, 6 vols. (1842-46; 2nd ed., Series 1-4, 1857-60); also, separately 2nd ed., 1st Series (Duffy, Dublin 1857), 2nd Series (Duffy, Dublin 1858), 3rd series (London: Catholic Publishers & Booksellers 1860), and 4th Series (London: Catholic Publishers & Booksellers 1860).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)