MITCHEL, John. Jail Journal; or, Five Years in British Prisons (Rare first edition)

Commenced on board the ‘Shearwater’ steamer in Dublin Bay, continued at Spike Island - on board the ‘Scourge’ war steamer - on board the ‘Dromedary’ hulk, Bermuda - on board the ‘Neptune’ convict ship - at Pernambuco - at the Cape of Good Hope (during the anti-convict rebellion) - at Van Diemen’s Land - at Sydney - at Tahiti - at San Francisco - at Greytown and concluding at No. 3 Pier, North River, New York. New York: Published at the Office of the “Citizen”, No. 3 Spruce Street, 1854. First edition. Crown octavo. pp. viii, 9-370. Original purple brown blind-stamped cloth, title in faded gilt on spine, gilt decoration on upper cover, replicated in blind on lower. Some tanning of the edges of the paper and occasional foxing as usual. A good copy of the very rare true first edition.
John Mitchel’s Jail Journal, for the style and emotional force of its writing is regarded as a classic of Anglo-Irish Literature. It is one of the most traditionally popular of Irish books. It captures something of the quintessence of the Irish political experience and critics of as widely divergent views as Pádraic Pearse and Owen Dudley Edwards have given it the highest praise. Arthur Griffith said of it: “In the political literature of Ireland it has no peer outside Swift”. First published in The Citizen, Mitchel’s first New York newspaper, the journal commences on May 27th, 1848 with his departure from Dublin and concludes with his arrival in New York on August 29th, 1854.
John Mitchel (1815-75). Young Irelander and journalist, was born in Dungiven, Co. Derry, the son of a Presbyterian minister. After graduating from Trinity he worked with a legal firm in Banbridge, Co. Down, where he came into conflict the local Orange Order. He contributed to ‘The Nation’, later establishing his own more radical newspaper United Irishman. In May 1848 he was transported to Van Diemen’s land for treason-felony. He escaped to America in 1853, where he was involved in Irish-American politics and was a leading supporter of slavery and the southern cause during the American Civil War.

[CAT 163]