GAUGHAN, J. Anthony. Austin Stack: Portrait of a Separatist (Signed first edition)

Dublin: Kingdom Books, 1977. First edition. Octavo. .pp. 408, with index. Publisher’s blue cloth, titled in gilt to spine, in the original illustrated dustwrapper designed by Gerald Bruen. A very good to near fine copy, the binding bright and clean; some light spotting and offsetting to preliminaries, with small ownership label of “Jim Cooney’s Library, Macroom” to front pastedown. Dustwrapper price-clipped with light creasing and minor wear to extremities. Signed by the author on the title-page.

An important and increasingly scarce biography of the revolutionary nationalist Austin Stack (1879–1929), one of the most uncompromising figures of the Irish revolutionary period. Gaughan’s study remains among the principal modern accounts of Stack’s political life, tracing his involvement from the Irish Volunteers and the Easter Rising through the War of Independence and Civil War years. Drawing extensively on archival and contemporary sources, the work provides valuable insight into Sinn Féin politics, republican organisation, and the ideological fractures within early twentieth-century Ireland.

Signed copies are notably uncommon, particularly in the original dustwrapper. An attractive association example with Macroom provenance, adding further Cork interest to an already desirable title in the field of modern Irish political history.

FN: Austin Stack served as Minister for Home Affairs in the First Dáil and was one of the most influential republican figures imprisoned during the revolutionary period. His opposition to the Anglo-Irish Treaty placed him firmly within the anti-Treaty camp during the Civil War. Despite his central role in Irish political history, substantial signed material relating to Stack and major biographies concerning him remain comparatively scarce in commerce.

[L4 10A]