Life
1887-1916; poet and revolutionary, son of Count George Noble Plunkett;
ed. privately and at Stonyhurst; spent parts of childhood in Sicily, Malta,
and Algeria for reasons of health (TB); issued The Circle and the Sword
(1911), poems; co-ed. with Padraic Colum and others, The Irish Review,
suppressed on account of his own articles, Nov. 1914; associated with
Edward Martyn and Thomas MacDonagh in founding Irish Theatre, Hardwicke
St., 1914; joined IRB and became Director of Operations; mbr. IRB Supreme
Council and Military Council, 1915; accompanied Casement to Germany in
search of guns, and left German High Command unimpressed; co-ed. with
Sean Mac Diarmada ‘Castle Document’; underwent throat surgery
prior to Rising, and left convalescent home to participate at GPO, as
aide-de-camp to Michael Collins, 1916; mbr. Provisional Govt.; m. Grace
Gifford in Kilmainham on the eve of his execution; Geraldine Plunkett
ed. collected poems as Poems of Joseph Mary Plunkett (1916); P.
S. O’Hegarty produced a ‘Bibliography of Joseph Mary Plunkett’
in Dublin Magazine, Vol. 7, no. 1 (1931). DIB DIW DIH DIL ODQ
KUN [FDA] OCIL.
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Criticism
Brendan Kennelly, ‘The Poetry of Joseph Plunkett’, in Dublin
Magazine (Spring 1966), pp.56-65.
Dublin Magazine (Spring 1966), Geraldine Plunkett [his sister], ‘Joseph Plunkett’, in Dublin Magazine (Spring 1966), pp.63-65.
Patricia Boylan, All Cultivated People (1988), p.91.
Cairns & Richards, Writing Ireland (1986), p. 105
Stephen Brown, The Press in Ireland (1937), Historical Sketch: III - The Modern Literary Revival’, pp.86-87.
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Notes
Oxford Dictionary of Quots., ‘I see his blood upon the rose/And
in the stars the glory of his eyes’, from Poems (1916). FDA2
[286, 781, 782]. SEE also Irish Book Lover 4, 6, 13, 16. BELF holds
Poems (1916).
Hogan ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature (1979): b. Nov. 1887; IRB, missions to Germany and USA, director of military operations; fnd with others The Irish Review; The Circle and the Sword (1911); post, Poems (Dublin: Talbot 1916). COMM, William Irwin, The Imagination of an Insurrection, Dublin Easter 1916 (OUP 1961), pp.131-139 [‘The poems show talent, but it is anybody’s guess if their baroque and chryselephantine lusciousness could every be brought under control, and once under control, directed toward greatness’; quoted in DIL]
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)