CONNOLLY, James. Labour in Ireland: Labour in Irish History; The Re-Conquest of Ireland. With an Introduction by Robert Lynd.

Dublin and London: Maunsel and Roberts Ltd., 1922. 8vo. 346pp. Original tan cloth, upper board and spine lettered and decorated in black, preserved in the scarce original printed dust jacket. Jacket somewhat darkened and rubbed, with light creasing and edge wear; cloth beneath remarkably fresh and clean. A very good copy in a very good example of the uncommon jacket.

An important early collected edition bringing together two of James Connolly’s principal works, Labour in Irish History and The Re-Conquest of Ireland, with an introduction by the distinguished Irish essayist Robert Lynd. Published only six years after Connolly’s execution following the Easter Rising, the volume presents his distinctive interpretation of Irish history through the relationship between national independence, labour and economic power.

Labour in Irish History, first published in 1910, traces the role of the working classes in Ireland’s political and revolutionary history, while The Re-Conquest of Ireland develops Connolly’s argument that genuine national independence required profound social and economic change. Together they contain some of the clearest expressions of the political philosophy that made Connolly one of the most influential figures in Irish republican and labour history.

A particularly desirable copy, retaining the scarce original 1922 dust jacket — an increasingly difficult survival on an important early edition of Connolly’s writings.

[L4 9A]