Patrick Pearse: The Triumph of Failure

Description

There has always been argument about whether Pearse’s leadership of the Easter Rising in 1916 represented a failure or a triumph. Pearse, who found himself on Easter Monday proclaimed President of the Provisional Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Republic, took on himself the most bitter of roles at the finish: he was the first to make the move to surrender – and he was the first to be executed.

In this re-issued major biography, first published in 1979 but long out of print, Ruth Dudley Edwards has placed Patrick Pearse in his historical, political and cultural context: she discusses his involvement with the Gaelic League, his role as a military leader in the nationalist movement and his claims as a socialist. Her account of his life does full justice to the story, recording its irony, absurdity and courage. This book will do much to arouse fresh interest in Patrick Pearse; it is sympathetic, balanced, meticulously researched, and above all highly readable.

Table of Contents

One: Beginnings

• James and Margaret
• Childhood
• School
• The Gaelic League

Two: Aspirations

• The Coista Gnotha
• The League and the Pan-Celts
• The League’s New Horizons
• The Publications Committee
• New Responsibilities
• An Claidheamh Soluis

Three: Journalist

• The New-Style Claideamh
• Issues
• Discord
• Prose and Poetry
• The Irish Theatre
• The Schools

Four: St. Enda’s

• Plans
• The First Year
• 1909-1910
• The Hermitage 1910-1912
• Finances 1908-1912

Five: Politics

• 1910=1912
• An Barr Buadh
• 1912-1913
• The Volunteers and the IRB
• The American Tour

Six: Preparations

• “I have turned my face to this road before me”
• The Struggle for the Volunteers
• The Achievement of Power
• The IRB at Work
• The Lead-up to Insurrection

Seven: The Rising

• Easter Monday
• The General Post Office
• Surrender
• Court-Martial and Execution

Eight: Aftermath

• The Political Legacy
• The Legacy to the Family
• The Legacy of Patrick Pearse

About the Author

Ruth Dudley Edwards read history at University College, Dublin. In 1978 she won the National University of Ireland Prize for Irish Historical Research for this best-selling biography and in 1998 the James Black Tait Memorial Prize for her biography of Victor Gollancz. She is also the author of An Atlas of Irish History, James Connolly, Harold Macmillan: A Life in Pictures, The Pursuit of Reason: The Economist 1843-1993, The Best of Bagehot, True Brits: Inside the Foreign Office, The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions and Newspapermen: Hugh Cudlipp, Cecil King and the Glory Days of Fleet Street. Ruth Dudley Edwards is an historian, prize-winning biographer, a noted writer of crime fiction and a prolific journalist.