WYNNE, Maud. An Irishman and his Family. Lord Morris and Killanin. By his daughter Maud Wynne. Illustrated. 

London: Murray, 1937. First edition. Demy octavo. pp. xiv, 293, 4, (publisher’s list). Green cloth, titled in gilt. A fine copy in dust jacket. Some mild foxing to prelims and dust jacket.

Michael Morris, Baron Morris and 1st Baron Killanin, PC (1826-1901), known as Sir Michael Morris, Bt, from 1885 to 1889, was an Irish lawyer and judge. He was Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench for Ireland from 1887 to 1889 and sat in the House of Lords as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary from 1889 to 1900. Morris was born at Spiddal, County Galway, eldest son of Martin Morris and Julia Blake, he was educated at Galway College and Trinity College Dublin. His father was a justice of the peace, and in 1841 became the first Roman Catholic to be High Sheriff of Galway, an office his son also held. The Morrises were a long-established merchant family, who were one of the fourteen Tribes of Galway who dominated the town's commercial life. His mother, a doctor's daughter, died of cholera in 1837.

This book gives a vivid picture of a very notable Irishman and his lively and large family in the wilds of Connemara, and afterwards in London. Traces the origin of the Morris family. In fact, the book might be called Bog Myrtle to London Pride. Lord Morris, after a brilliant career at the Irish Bar, became a Lord of Appeal in London. He was the friend and adviser of many well-known people in political and legal circles, and interesting letters from the late Lords Balfour, Morley and Randolph Churchill are included. But the real attraction of the book is the remarkable character sketch which it gives of "Himself," and the unusual and unconventional life which the family lived in Ireland - and carried on with really remarkably little adaptation in London Society. The book is full of great  stories: Spiddal; Fairs; Digging Potatoes; Galway - Terror of the Fishwives; Life at Trinity; Large Family and Few Visitors; Never say Good Morrow to the Devil; The Great Famine; Gladstone; Lady Gregory; Fishing at Spiddal; Travelling Mugwugs - George Wyndham; Balfour; Homburg - Himself and the Prince of Wales; Himself at the Bench; Arrival in London; Jane Austen Lectures; Art and Literature in the Nineties; Story of North of Ireland Fishermen; Parnell and Gladstone; Lady Oxford and Asquith; Michael O'Leary, V.C.; Sir Henry Wilson; Winston Churchill; Lloyd George; Story of Police Magistrate, etc.

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