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John Mitchel and his biographers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2015

Michael Huggins
Michael Huggins*
Affiliation:
Department of History and Archaeology, University of Chester
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Extract

If, as Thomas Flanagan has asserted, ‘the importance of John Mitchel's Jail journal to the tradition of Irish separatism has been underestimated’, the appearance of James Quinn's recent short biography of Mitchel is to be welcomed. Indeed, the remarkable thing is that Quinn's was the first book-length biography of Mitchel to be published since 1938. The biographical literature on Mitchel has veered between the hagiographic and the critical before settling, ultimately, into an apparent historiographical indifference. This essay examines Mitchel's biographies, his commemoration in periodical and ephemeral sources, and the development of the historiography of this most ardent republican, concluding that a renewed interest in Mitchel is timely.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 150 , November 2012 , pp. 249 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2012

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References

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