TRIMBLE, Wm. C. The History of Enniskillen, with reference to some manors in Co. Fermanagh and other local subjects. With a folding map and 112 plates.

Three volumes. Enniskillen: William Trimble, 1919/1921. pp. (1) xx, 281, (2) xiii, 282-650, viii, (3) xix, 651-1156, xi. Modern quarter purple morocco on matching marbled boards. Ex lib with neat small circular stamps. The rarest of all Irish local histories. A very good set. Extremely rare.
William Copeland Trimble (1851–1941) was a prominent Ulster newspaper editor and public figure, the son of William Trimble, proprietor of the Impartial Reporter, and Anne Trimble (née Stewart). Educated at Enniskillen Royal School (Portora), he was apprenticed in 1868 to Alexander Thom, the Dublin printer, before returning to Enniskillen as junior partner in the family newspaper in 1875. Although he briefly considered careers at the bar and as a concert singer, he possessed a fine tenor voice, journalism became his lifelong vocation. Initially sympathetic to liberal and tenant-right causes, he joined the Land League in 1880 but broke with its militant nationalism after the Land Act of 1881, founding the Fermanagh Tenant Right Association later that year. His attempts to chart a moderate course alienated radicals on both sides, and his editorials increasingly lamented the deepening political polarisation of Ulster society in the early 1880s.
From 1886, following the Liberal split over Home Rule, Trimble aligned himself with Liberal Unionism under Joseph Chamberlain and became a forceful advocate of the Ulster unionist position, frequently addressing audiences in Britain. In 1895 he toured English constituencies speaking for the Conservative cause, and he remained a central figure in unionist politics thereafter. As editor, he steered the Impartial Reporter through major crises, including the destruction of the family printing works by fire in 1901, maintaining publication through temporary arrangements until rebuilding was complete. During the Boer War and the First World War he raised substantial funds for the Inniskilling regiments, and he played an active role in the Ulster anti–Home Rule movement of 1912-14, even raising a mounted troop in Enniskillen for the Ulster Volunteer Force.
His three volume History of Enniskillen is one of the most substantial Irish local histories of the century. Some days after suffering a partial stroke, he died 24 January 1941 in Fermanagh county hospital. He is buried in Breandrum cemetery, Enniskillen. While Trimble was not a professional academic historian, his History of Enniskillen remains an important primary compilation for researchers of Fermanagh history, genealogy, and Ulster political culture. Complete set are now exceedingly rare on the market, especially in good condition.