Life
1831-1915 [usu. called “O’Donovan Rossa”]; b. Roscarbery, Co. Cork; relief worker
during Great Famine; grocery business in Skibbereen; fnd. Phoenix National
and Literary Societies, 1856, becoming a Fenian organiser invitation of
James Stephens, 1858; emigrated to America and returned, 1863; business
mgr. the Irish People, 1863-1865; arrested 1865, sentenced penal
servitude for life (20 years), following a dock-speech of eight hours
assailing Judge William Keogh and the ‘dirty law’; elected MP Co. Tipperary,
while in prison, Nov. 1869, defeating the Liberal Catholic Heron by 1131 to 1028; released 1871 after cruel treatment, following
campaign by Amnesty Association and questions in the House raised by George
Henry Moore; emig. US with John Devoy, Charles O’Connell, and others
of the ‘Cuba Five’, receiving welcome from House of Representatives;
worked as hotel manager, and contrib. The Irishman; Head Centre,
1877, opposing moderatism of Devoy; organised Skirmishing Fund; broke
with Clann na Gael, 1880; shot and wounded in his New York office in attack
by Yseult Dudley, and Englishwoman enraged by his founding role in the
Skirmishing Fund, 1887; fnd. and ed. United Irishman; visited Ireland
in 1894 and 1904-06; O’Donovan Rossa’s Prison Life,
Six Years in English Prisons (1874), reprinted as Irish Rebels
in English Prisons (1882); Rossa’s Recollections;
1838 to 1898 (1898); he was married three times, going to the US with
his third wife; d. NY; his funeral at Glasnevin, 1 Aug. 1915, was the
occasion of Patrick Pearse’s famous oration on ‘this unconquered
and unconquerable man’ [there is no entry in DNB]. DIB DIH DIL
FDA OCIL
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Works
Autobiography, Irish Rebels in English
Prisons [Six Years in English Prisons]: A Record of
Prison Life (NY: Kenedy 1882); S. Ua Cearnaigh, ed., [Do.,
abridged as] My Years in English Jails (Tralee 1967); rep. as Irish
Rebels in English Prisons (Dingle: Brandon Press 1991), 314pp.; Rossa’s
Recollections 1838 to 1898 (NY: Mariner Harbour: O’Donovan Rossa
1898).
Fiction, Edward O’Donnell, A Story of Ireland of Our Day (NY: S. W. Green’s 1884), 300pp., 8o. [prev. by Downey].
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Criticism
P. H. Pearse, ‘A Character Study: Diarmuid Ó Donnabhain Rosa,
1831-1915’, Souvenir of Public Funeral to Glasnevin Cemetary
(Dublin 1 Aug. 1915); ‘O’Donovan Rossa’, in Political
Writings and Speeches (Dublin: Phoenix Publishing Co. Ltd. 1924),
pp.125-37.
D. G. Boyce, ‘Separatism and the Irish National Tradition’, in Colin H. Williams, ed., National Separatism (Cardiff: Wales UP 1982), p.89.
Pádraic Pearse, ‘O’Donovan Rossa’, in Political Writings and Speeches (Dublin: Phoenix Publishing Co. Ltd. 1924), pp.125-37
Jenny Marx, Articles [...] on the Irish Question’, in Marx / Engels on Ireland and the Irish Question, ed. L. I. Golman (Moscow: Progress Books 1986 [edn.], [Article] III.
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Notes
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington:
University of America 1904); selects ‘Edward Duffy’ and ‘My
Prison Chamber’.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2; selects O’Donovan Rossa’s Prison Life [160-63], Rossa’s Recollections 1838 to 1898 [293-65]; with remarks and notes at 211 [funeral], 243n [Pheonix Societies], also 250n, 260, 274-75. 281, 292, 293-94, 708n, 781; 368 [Works, as supra].
CELT: ‘O’Donovan Rossa’, in Political Writings and Speeches (Dublin: Phoenix Publishing Co. Ltd. 1910-1919) is held at CELT.]
Dominic Daly prints the ‘toast in verse’ that Hyde addressed
to O’Donovan Rossa the Fenian - but it reads less encomiastic than
satirical, ‘I drink to the health of O’Donovan Rossa/Where will
I find his like at home or abroad,/Who would drive the pople without arms
or uniforms/Into the midst of the soldiers, the swords and the bayonets./Who
bought and kept the powder and guns/Which he could not send to the poor
defenceless people,/Who nevertheless urged our poor unarmed peasantry/To
drive the Saxon soldiers away across the sea.’ [Daly, The Young
Douglas Hyde, 1974, p.47.]
Donald Torchiana cites P. H. Pearse, ‘A Character Study: Diarmuid Ó Donnabhain Rosa, 1831-1915’, Souvenir of Public Funeral to Glasnevin Cemetary (Dublin 1 Aug. 1915) in Backgrounds to Joyce’s Dubliners (1986).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)