Jail Journal; or, Five Years in British Prisons

Glasgow, Scotland: R. & T. Washbourne, Ltd, 1876. Hardcover. pp. 320. Small 8vo. Bound in publisher's original green cloth, ruled in blind. Portions of spine were missing - now re-backed and remains re-laid. Some soiling to contents. Binding tight. A good copy. John Mitchel (1815-1875) was an Irish nationalist, journalist, and revolutionary. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1830, and qualified as a solicitor in 1840. In 1843, he began to write for 'The Nation' and developed a 'distinctive style of biting satire using a neo-biblical vocabulary', however his militancy alienated many moderate nationalists and in 1848 he started 'The Weekly Irishman'. In the same year he was tried for sedition and treason and transported to Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania). It was during this period of enforced isolation that he wrote his famous 'Jail Journal'. Its emotive identification of the individual and the Irish nation made it a central text of Irish nationalism. In 1853, Mitchel escaped from captivity and arrived in San Francisco, eventually making his way to New York, where he started the 'Citizen' in 1854. He became a strenuous anti-abolishionist and wrote two more important books: 'The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps)' in 1861 and 'The History of Ireland' in 1868, both titles that essentially accuse the English of genocidal intentions towards the Irish. In the late 1860s, he was imprisoned for articles he published supporting slavery. He returned to Ireland after his release, and was elected a member of parliament for Tipperary, but his election was quashed on the ground that he was a convicted felon (see DNB 2042). This title was first published in America in 1854, and in Ireland in 1864. Our copy is the 'Author's Edition': no date of publication is given, but COPAC & the BL suggest 1876.