Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa (1831-1915) was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), or the Fenians as they were better known. From Rosscarbery, County Cork, Rossa was a shopkeeper by trade and in 1856 would found the Phoenix National and Literary Society with the aim of “the liberation of Ireland by force of arms”, this society would merge with the IRB several years later. Rossa was arrested and imprisoned as part of the Irish People raids in 1865, enduring incredibly harsh conditions in English jail, and was returned as an abstentionist MP for Tipperary before being released and moving to the United States in 1870, where he would form the Cuba Five alongside John Devoy, John McClure, Henry Mullady and Charles O’Connell. In America, Rossa continued his Irish revolutionary activity, taking part in the “dynamite campaign” against British cities from 1881 to 1885. A veteran of the Irish republican cause, his death in 1915 saw his body returned to Ireland with a hero’s welcome where at his graveside, Pádraig Pearse would give one of Irish nationalism’s most famous speeches.
Writings
Rossa’s Recollections: 1838 to 1898
To Louis Napoleon, Prince President of the Irish Republic
Letter To The Editor of ‘The Eagle’
The Soldier Of Fortune (1863)
“The First Man To Handle A Pike” (1864)
A Jobber’s Jottings (1864)
On The New Departure (1878)
Prospectus of The United Irishman, New York (1881)
The Crime of Poverty (1882)
London Bridge (1885)
To John Morrissey of Carlow (1885)
Burn London (1885)
Fuath-Na-Gall (1897)