THE UNITED IRISHMEN, THEIR LIVES AND TIMES (TWO VOLUMES)

London, England: J. Madden & Co, 1842. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good Plus. Octavo, 8.2 in. x 5 in. Volume I: pp. xvi, [3], 452, 1-4 (advertising). Volume II: 451, [1], 1-4 (advertising). Printed by E. Brewster. Modern three-quarter dark brown calf ruled in blind over marbled boards. Gilt title with gilt horizontal bars, and four raised bands, to spine. New cream endpapers. Light spotting to half title pages. Unmarked interiors. Madden, Richard Robert (1798-1886) was a medical man, traveller, anti-slavery campaigner, government official, and historian of the United Irishmen... It is for his writings on the United Irishmen that he is best known in Ireland. His interest began when he visited and befriended in New York, after leaving Jamaica in 1835, the elderly William James MacNeven, by then the sole survivor of the original leadership of the Irish revolutionary movement, who persuaded him to become its historian. For the next six or seven years Madden collected information, oral as well as documentary, from elderly survivors or descendants whom he sought out in Ireland. His aim was to rehabilitate the United Irishmen, to lend them respectability, and to explain their rebellion as an inevitable consequence of bad government. The result was seven volumes entitled The United Irishmen, their lives and times (1842-6); four more volumes appeared later (1857-60). The work is partisan, uncritical, and disorganised but invaluable for its originality, sources, and detail. Its treatment is largely biographical (over 50 United Irishmen are featured) and lacks the usual narrative. (from Dict. of Irish Biography).