O’FLAHERTY, Liam. The Life of Tim Healy. (SIGNED PRESENTATION COPY FROM O’FLAHERTY)

Frontispiece. London: Cape, 1927. Octavo. First edition. pp. 320. Worn cloth, titled in gilt. Spine professionally rebacked. Signed presentation copy from Liam O’Flaherty to Tommy Smith. Cloth faded a very good copy.
O’Flaherty’s biography of Timothy Michael Healy (1855-1931), barrister, Parnellite parliamentarian and, ultimately, the first Governor-General of the Irish Free State (1922-28) is the novelist’s only full-length biography. Written in the wake of revolution and civil war, it offers a combative, highly readable portrait of a figure who helped to engineer the Parnell split, later opposed Sinn Féin, yet accepted office under the Treaty settlement. The frontispiece shows Healy in later life.

[Cat 163]