Leon Ó Broin

Life
1902- [occas. Léon, and commonly O’Broin; err. Ó Bróin]; b. Dublin; ed. CBS, UCD; King’s Inns; active in War of Independence; Bar, 1924; Gaelic League secretary; civil servant, 1925-67; editor of Maria Legionis, the organ of Frank Duff’s Legion of Mary; sec. of Posts and Telegraphs, 1948-67; MRIA; Pres. Irish Hist. Soc, 1973; member of folklore commission; plays, short stories, biographies and histories. DIW

Works
Irish, Arus na nGábhadh agus Scéalta Eile (Dublin 1923); Ag Strachadh lis an Saol agus Scéalta Eile (Dublin 1929); An Rún agus Scéalta Eile (Dublin 1933); Miss Crookshank agus Emmet (Dublin: Sairseal & Dill 1954); Miss Crookshank agus Coirp Eile (Dublin: Sairseal & Dill 1951) [on bodies preserved in S. Michan’s]; Comhcheilg sa Chaisleán (Dublin 1963) [biog.]; Na Sasanaigh agus Eirí Amach na Casca (Dublin: Sáirséal agus Dill 1967), trans. and rep. as Dublin Castle and the 1916 Rising (Helicon: 1966)]. Plays, Slan Muirisg (1944), An Boisgín Ceoil (1945); An Oíche úd i mBeithil (1949). Translations incl. An Maidíneach (Dublin 1971). QRY: Tristan Bernard: l’Anglais tel qu'on le parle Irish (Dublin: Oifig An Tsolathair 1938).

English, Parnell (1937); The Unfortunate Mr Emmet (1958); Dublin Castle and the Rising: the story of Sir Matthew Nathan (Dublin: Helicon 1966; London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1967); Do. rev. edn. (London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1971); Do., rep. edn. (NYU Press 1971); Charles Gavan Duffy, Patriot and Statesman: The Story of Charles Gavan Duffy (Dublin: Duffy 1967); The Chief Secretary, Augustine Birrell in Ireland (London: Chatto & Windus; Edinburgh: Archon 1969); Fenian Fever: The American Dilemma (London: Chatto & Windus, 1971) [infra]; Michael Collins [Gill’s Irish Lives] (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1980); ed., In Great Haste: Letters of Michael Collins and Kitty Kiernan (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1983); Just like yesterday: an autobiography (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1986) [var. 1985]; Dublin Castle and the 1916 Rising (Helicon: 1966) [English trans. of Na Sasanaigh agus Eirí Amach na Casca (Dublin: Sáirséal agus Dill 1967)]; The Chief Secretary (London 1969); ‘Maurice Moore and the National Volunteers’, in The Irish Sword (Winter 1976); Revolutionary Underground (1976); Memoir of Joseph Brennan, civil servant and first Governor of Central Bank Dublin (Inst. Publ. Adman. [1982]), 183pp.; Protestant Nationalists in Revolutionary Ireland, The Stopford Connection (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1985)

Articles, ‘Just Like Yesterday’ Leon O’Broin’s memoir of O’Faoláin’s meeting with Frank Duff, in “O’Faoláin Special Issue”, ed. Seán Dunne, Cork Review (Cork 1991), p.77-78; based on experience as editor of Maria Legionis; this encounter concerned with censorship and the church, led to the formation of a shortlived society called Common Ground.

Fenian Fever: An Anglo-American Dilemma (London: Chatto & Windus 1971), 264pp., index. Bio-note, until recently civil servant; experience in depts. of finance and education, permanent head of Post Office, 1948; represented Ireland at Universal Postal Union, etc.; wartime Regional Commissioner and Vice-pres. Broadcasting Union; bilingual writer, publications include works on Parnell and Robert Emmet; The Chief Secretary, a most successful account of Birrell’s Irish period; a study of Dublin Castle in 1916. Listed facing title, Parnell; Charles Gavan Duffy; The Unfortunate Mr Emmet; Dublin Castle and the 1916 rising; The Chief Secretary. Epigraph, ‘After the Fenian fever of the last two years, constitutional conflicts appear flat to the masses’ (Lord Mayo to Disraeli, 12 Aug. 1868). Ded. Breandán mac Giolla Choille, Keeper of Irish State Paper Office. CONTENTS by chaps., Conspiracy; The Escape from Richmond Bridewell; Fenianism in the Army; A Change of Government; The Watch on Stephens; Preparations for a Rising in Ireland; Colonel Kelly in Command; On Tallaght Hill; The Rising Outside Dublin; Trials and Tribulations; ‘The Manchester Martyrs’; The Explosion at Clerkenwell; The Fever Passes. Notes, Bibliography, index. Bibl. includes manuscript sources and inter al., Robert Anderson, Sidelights on the Home Rule Movement (1906), and The Lighter Side of Official Life (1910); Marcus Bourke, John O’Leary (1967); Thomas N. Brown, Irish American Nationalism (1966); Frederick Moir Bussy, Irish Conspirators (1910); William D’Arcy, The Fenian Movement in the United States (1947); Joseph Denieffe, A Personal Narrative of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood (1906); John Devoy, Recollections of an Old Rebel (1929); J. L. Hammond, Gladstone and the Irish Nation (1938); Brian Jenkins, Fenians and Anglo-American Relations during Reconstruction (1969); Henri Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years in the Secret Service (1892); Donal McCartney, ‘The Church and Fenianism’, in Irish University Review, vol. IV, 3 (1967); R. B. McDowell, The Irish Adminstration 1801-1914 (1964); Breandán Mac Giolla Choille, ‘Fenian Documents in the State paper Office, in Irish Hist. Studies, XVI 63; Peadar MacSuibhne, Paul Cullen and His Contemporaries (1961-65); Philip Magnus, Gladstone (1954); T. W. Moody, ‘Irish-American Nationalism’, in Irish Hist. Studies, XV, 60; Moody, ‘Fenianism, Home Rule and Land War’, Chp. 18 of The Course of Irish History; Moody, ed., The Fenian Movement (1968); E. R. Norman, The Catholic Church in the Age of Rebellion 1859-1873 (1965); Tomás Ó Fiaich, ‘The Clergy and Fenianism 1860-1870’, in Irish Eccles. Record, Vol. 109, 2; John O’Leary, Fenians and Fenianism (1896); Seán Ó Lúing, John Devoy (1961); Richard Pigott, Recollections of an Irish Nationalist Journalist (1882); John Rutherford, The Secret History of the Fenian Conspiracy (1877); Desmond Ryan, The Phoenix Flame (1937), Ryan, Fenian Chief [James Stephens] (1967); Ryan and William O’Brien, eds., Devoy’s Postbag (1948-1953); T. D. Sullivan, Troubled Times in Irish Politics (1905); T. D., A. M., and D. B. Sullivan, Speeches from the Dock (n.d.); Charles C. Tansell, America and the Fight for Irish Freedom (1957); David Thornley, Isaac Butt and Home Rule (1964).

Oliver Snoddy writes of Na Sasanaigh agus Eirí Amach na Casca (Dublin: Sáirséal agus Dill 1967), that ‘It deals with the Rising from the viewpoint of the authorities in Dublin Castle, a fresh, original and most interesting treatment of the subject.’ (p.148 in Snoddy, ‘Notes on Literature in Irish Dealing with the Fight for Freedom’, Éire-Ireland, 3, 2, Summer 1968, pp. 138-48.)

[T]he unfortunate Emmet’ is a phrase in the prefatory remarks of Henry Brereton Code’s Insurrection of 23 July 1803.

In Protestant Nationalists in Revolutionary Ireland: The Stopford Connection (1985), the abbreviated title is reproduced as a left-hand page header under the form ‘Protestant Nationalism, &c.’, passim.

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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)