GRIFFIN, Gerald. The Collegians (IRISH NOVEL RARE FIRST EDITION FROM THE LIBRARY OF F.E. DINSHAW)

In three volumes. London: Saunders and Otley, Conduit Street, 1829. First edition. 12mo. pp. (1) ii, 330, (2) ii, 349, (3) ii, 322. Bound without half titles in later nineteenth century half red calf on speckled pink cloth boards, title and author in gilt direct on spine. Spine divided into six panels by five raised bands, title and volume number in gilt in the second and third. Bookplate of F.E. Dinshaw on leading pastedowns. Light spotting to prelims. Top edges gilt. A near fine set. Rare.
Loeber G161. Wolff 2782. Brown 660.
Griffin, Gerald (1803-1840) poet and novelist, was born in Limerick, where his father was a brewer. His first master was Richard McEligot, a genius of some celebrity in Limerick. When Gerald was seven years old the family moved to Fairy Lawn, on the Shannon. Here his strong literary tastes began to develop themselves, they were wisely directed and encouraged by his mother, and fostered by a visiting tutor. Gerald was almost constantly immersed in books, and he even began to write poetry. At times he devoted himself to fishing and shooting, more from the opportunity they afforded of revelling in the contemplation of nature, than from any love of the sports themselves.
His parents emigrated with some of their children to Pennsylvania in 1820, the remaining children including Gerald moved in with his elder brother, a doctor, who lived in Adare and afterwards at Pallas Kenry. Gerald went to London in 1823 to further his literary career. He met John Banim who introduced him to publishers of literary magazines, which he wrote for. His Holland-tide (1827) were his first successful publication. The pleasure of his return home in 1827 was saddened by the death of a beloved sister, in whose memory he wrote the exquisite lines commencing, “Oh, not for ever lost”. During his sojourn at Pallas Kenry, he wrote the Tales of the Munster Festivals, which he brought to London to publish in the autumn. One of the most laboured of his works was his novel The Invasion, a book displaying minute acquaintance with the manners and customs of ancient Ireland. About this period he became intimate with Lydia Fisher (daughter of Mary Leadbeater), this unhappy affair made him burn most of his manuscripts and in 1838 he entered the Christian Brothers and dedicated the rest of his life to teaching poor children in Cork.
His Collegians, the ablest and most successful of his works was greatly admired by Maria Edgeworth, Aubrey De Vere, Charles Gavan Duffy and Justin McCarthy. Griffin sent the £800 he earned for it to his parents in America. The novel was based on a true story of the notorious murder of an Irish Catholic girl (Ellen Hanley) by a Protestant Anglo-Irish man (John Scanlon) who drowned Ellen so that he might marry a woman of wealth. In the actual trial Daniel O’Connell defended the prisoner and it is alleged that Griffin reported on the proceedings for the Press. Now judged by some as the best nineteenth-century Irish novel, it was adapted to the stage as The Colleen Bawn, by Dion Boucicault and for the opera Lily of Killarney by Jules Benedict. Throughout his fifteen year literary career he wrote numerous tales, stories, novels, poems, plays, operas, and essays. His best remembered song is the classic ‘Aileen Aroon’. He died of typhus at the north monastery in Cork aged thirty seven.
Provenance: This copy belonged to the Karachi based Parsi businessman and philanthropist Seth Edulji (or Eduljee) Dinshaw CIE (1842-1914). He was a Karachi-based philanthropist during the British colonial era. Dinshaw had risen from poverty, and became the largest landowner in the city. Known as F.E. Dinshaw, he made his fortune as a contractor to the British Army during the Second Afghan War and went on to acquire land and property equating to almost half of the city of Karachi. His bookplate is of a shrouded woman within an ornate circular frame.

[Cat 157]