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83 IRISH CIVIL WAR – O’GRADY, Standish James. The Coming of Cuculain. Dublin & London: The Talbot Press Ltd; T. Fisher Unwin, [c.1918] “the dangerous ladies” A remarkable testament to the role of women in the Irish Civil War and their oft-forgotten mass imprisonment, signed on the front and rear endpapers by 39 female Republican prisoners incarcerated in the notorious Kilmainham Jail, many noting their cell locations and the date, under the heading “The Dangerous Ladies”, all signed between 1 September and 6 October 1923. Kilmainham Jail in Dublin was for many years the main British internment centre for Irish dissidents and revolutionaries, including the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising. Between February and November 1923 over 300 women and girls were incarcerated there, many without trial. “Many of the women who had participated in Ireland’s fight for freedom never spoke about this period in their lives. This was particularly true of those imprisoned for their part in the Civil War. The bitterness of those years and their experiences at the hands of fellow countrymen meant that it was an episode best concealed. Also, it had been a source of extreme embarrassment to some families that their womenfolk had been in prison. In many households the Civil War was never discussed” (McCoole, p. 15). This copy is a testament to the camaraderie and social network that existed behind the prison walls, and a record of a chapter in these women’s lives which was often later hidden. One signatory, Cecilia Gallagher, left a diary of her time in the jail which has been studied and reproduced in the Dublin Historical Record . There, she mentions many of the signatories and their activities, demonstrating that a thriving political culture continued in prison. They continued to debate Ireland’s future, commemorated events in the struggle, held elections and formed committees, undertook protests and hunger strikes, and held entertainments. A couple add playful notes: “Buffalo Bill”, “one of the Five Night Birds”. McCoole notes that these were five young women who stayed up laughing, talking and singing songs long after they should have been asleep (p. 132).
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The Coming of Cuculain , first published in 1894, is a modern retelling of the exploits of the legendary hero Cú Chulainn from the Ulster cycle of ancient Gaelic mythology. The author, Irish journalist, writer, and historian Standish James O’Grady (1846–1928), played a formative role in the Celtic Revival. The compiler of the signatures evidently saw a link between the Celtic, literary, and political revival of Ireland. A full list of the signatories is available. Octavo. Original red cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Housed in a custom red cloth flat-back box. Cloth bright, edges marked and foxed, contents a little musty, a good copy in restored dust jacket. ¶ Nellie O Cleirigh, “A Political Prisoner in Kilmainham Jail: The Diary of Cecilia Saunders Gallagher”, in Dublin Historical Record , vol. 56, no. 1, 2003; Sinéad McCoole, No Ordinary Women: Irish Female Activists in the Revolutionary Years, 1900–1923 , 2003. £6,250 [150759] 84 JAFFREY, Phoebe. Darjeeling Ferns. Darjeeling, West Bengal: 1881 A very fine herbarium with expansive additional samples A superb and uncommon hortus siccus of ferns from West Bengal, compiled and mounted by Phoebe Jaffrey, wife of Andrew Thomas Jaffrey, the founding curator in 1878 of the Lloyd Botanic Gardens in Darjeeling. This copy has been copiously expanded by a later British amateur botanist, with a huge number of samples added both within and without. The samples in Jaffrey’s herbarium are captioned as “British Sikkim”, a region with one of the most diverse floras in India, and especially rich in ferns. While living in India, Jaffrey created botanical albums for sale, usually of large folio size, mounted with excellent specimens of local ferns. She sold the albums singly, and in sets of two or three, those such as this dating from 1882 with her label at the rear.
Garden of Ireland in Glasnevin, and Natural History Museum, London also have volumes of ferns by Jaffrey”. We have located only one other copy in commerce, from the library of Elizabeth E. Hawkins, and have ourselves sold a single copy; by our count, there are just ten copies traceable worldwide. Folio. Original blue half morocco, blue cloth boards, title in gilt to front board. A large number of laid-in plant samples, including numerous mosses and grasses. A large brown leather suitcase containing 481 further loose sheets with mounted samples, 261 of these housed in early 20th-century wooden board flower press with blue belt. With 50 Darjeeling ferns mounted singly on recto, mostly full-page, each labelled in manuscript with the genus, species, and patria, a single example dated 1882. Darjeeling Ferns : ownership inscription of one Horace A. Wilcock on front pastedown. Wilcock ( c .1889–1956) was commissioned into the Indian Army during World War One. Extremities rubbed, wear to spine ends, boards bowing due to additional inserted material, mottling to cloth, remnants of label to rear cover, faint damp marks to margins of contents, a better than good copy. Laid-in samples: faint soiling to edges, samples generally well-preserved. Suitcase: wear to extremities, lining lifting a little, occasional pencil marks, loose samples presenting nicely. ¶ Roger Jeffrey, India in Edinburgh: 1750s to the Present , 2020. £8,750 [150473]
The album provides a fruitful example of the roles taken up by colonial wives in India in the documentation and possession of the natural world. Andrew Jaffrey “was one of a number of Scottish gardeners selected by Balfour for service in India, initially for the Agri-Horticultural Society of Madras, but who ended up in Darjeeling from where he sent a series of fine specimens of the various flora” (Jeffrey). While Andrew was testing the India flora for its suitability for mass-farming and sending specimens back to Britain for assimilation into botanical collections, Phoebe was supporting this process by collecting and commodifying the plant-life in a domestic manner. The flower press in the suitcase is inscribed in ink with the name of one Betty Jefferys, who collected an impressive number of samples in British woods in the 1920s. Motivated by the example of Jaffrey she has made and documented her own expansive explorations in the world of botany. Surviving examples of Jaffrey’s albums are notably uncommon; while WorldCat locates just a single copy (at Harvard’s Botany Libraries), the University of St Andrews has a collection of three such volumes, and their catalogue notes that the “University of Dundee Museums, National Botanical
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All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
LOUDER THAN WORDS
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