LANDRETH, Helen. The Pursuit of Robert Emmet. Signed presentation copy from the author to Pearce McGrath.

Illustrated. New York & London: Whittlesey House McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1948. First American edition. pp. xviii, 407. Blue cloth, title and decoration in gilt on upper cover and spine. A fine copy in very good unpriced clipped dust jacket.
“I can serve my country as well on the scaffold as in the field,” Robert Emmet wrote his brother Tom in 1803 and he was right. His name has come ringing down the centuries as the very symbol of Irish nationalism, and of man’s fight for freedom. The strange and tragic pattern behind Robert Emmet’s ill-fated rebellion against the English has never before been told. In this exciting picture of his heroic career lies the glory of a man who gave his life for his principles, a romantic idealist who could and did put duty before personal happiness. In the last part of the eighteenth century the city of Dublin swarmed with spies and shoplifters, patriots and pick-pockets. The United Irishmen were striving by every possible means to win independence for their country. The English were just as bitterly opposed to it. Into this scene came Robert Emmet with a name so outstanding in Ireland that merely its mention could recruit men for the cause of liberty. - Blurb.

[Cat 160]