An extensive, scholarly biography of Irish leader Michael Davitt after his involvement with the Irish Land League.

Ever since William Dean Howells declared his "realism war" in the 1880s, literary historians have regarded the rise of "realism" and "naturalism" as the great development in American post-Civil War fiction. Yet there are many problems with this generalization. It is virtually impossible, for example, to extract from the novels and manifestoes of American writers of this period any consistent definitions of realism or naturalism as modes of literary representation. Rather than seek common traits in widely divergent "realist" and "naturalist" literary works, Michael Davitt Bell focuses here on the role that these terms played in the social and literary discourse of the 1880s and 1890s. Bell argues that in America, "realism" and "naturalism" never achieved the sort of theoretical rigor that they did in European literary debate. Instead, the function of these ideas in America was less aesthetic than ideological, promoting as "reality" a version of social normalcy based on radically anti-"literary" and heavily gendered assumptions. What effects, Bell asks, did ideas about realism and naturalism have on writers who embraced and resisted them? To answer this question, he devotes separate chapters to the work of Howells and Frank Norris (the principal American advocates of realism and naturalism in the 1880s and 1890s), Mark Twain, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Sarah Orne Jewett. Bell reveals that a chief function of claiming to be a realist or a naturalist was to provide assurance that one was a "real" man rather than an "effeminate" artist. Since the 1880s, Bell asserts, all serious American fiction writers have had to contend with this problematic conception of literary realism. The true story of the transformation of American fiction after the Civil War is the history of this contention - a history of individual accommodations, evasions, holding actions, and occasional triumphs.

Originally edited by F.X. Martin in 1963, this is the 50th anniversary edition of the classic work on the Irish Volunteers. This book is a wonderful and unique historical record of the Irish Volunteer movement, revealing fascinating documents and essays written by the leading members of Irish nationalism, during a period when the Irish people witnessed social and cultural changes that were as radical as anything seen in Irish history. Including contributions by Bulmer Hobson, Eoin MacNeill, Pádraig Pearse, Michael Davitt, The O’Rahilly, Éamonn Ceannt, and Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh, this a rich compendium of essays, original letters, first hand reports, inspiring speeches, newspaper editorials, military and administrative instructions as well as members’ subscription lists. This classic text explains how the Irish Volunteers, encompassing a new generation of Irish men and women, oversaw the develop ment of a new and re- energized movement, free from much of the party-political machinations and interference that had hindered Irish nationalist attempts at self-determination in previous decades. As described in these essays, the Irish Volunteers were a ‘broad church’ encompassing members of the Gaelic League, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Sinn Féin, the IRB, Irish Citizen Army, Cumann na mBan and Fianna Éireann, all contributing to a unified and dynamic coalition. Something new and unprecedented occurred in Irish history – a movement which we are only now beginning to understand in terms of its great and distinctive legacy, a full century later.

In 1871, John Devoy, a young Irishman fighting for Irish independence, came to the United States in exile. Yet even while across the ocean, this Fenian greatly influenced Irish affairs. Terry Golway's assiduously researched biography of Devoy chronicles a lifetime of activism in which he garnered tremendous financial and moral support for the cause in Ireland. Devoy was instrumental in both the Easter Rising in 1916 and the creation of the Irish Free State. Intimate details of Devoy's life and his work are artfully interwoven as Terry Golway captures John Devoy's valiant role in Ireland's struggle for freedom.