Longford (The Earl of) & O’Neill (Thomas P.) Éamon de Valera (Signed by Éamon de Valera and Sinéad de Valera)

Illustrated. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, in association with Hutchinson of London, 1970. pp. xii, 686. Green buckram, title in gilt on spine. Ex-lib. A fine bright copy in pictorial dust jacket. A little edge-worn, otherwise a very good copy.

This monumental authorised biography of Éamon de Valera, Ireland’s most influential twentieth-century political leader, was written by Frank Pakenham, Earl of Longford, and historian Thomas P. O’Neill with de Valera’s personal cooperation and access to his papers. The work traces de Valera’s extraordinary journey from his birth in New York (1882), his education at Blackrock and University College Dublin, leadership in the 1916 Rising, and his dominant role in the Irish Free State and later as President of Ireland.

This copy bears on the front free endpaper the autographs of Éamon de Valera and his wife Sinéad de Valera, dated 11 February 1971. Such a dual signature is exceptionally scarce; both signatures appear in contrasting pens, the former in blue ink, the latter in black, each clearly in their characteristic hands. The date falls shortly before de Valera’s ninetieth birthday, by which time he had largely retired from public life.

The dust jacket carries four historic photographs: de Valera as a child, as a soldier of 1916, as bridegroom, and as political leader. The text, set in Ehrhardt type and printed on antique wove paper by Hely Thom, Dublin, remains a cornerstone of modern Irish political biography.

Copies signed by de Valera are uncommon; examples signed by both Éamon and Sinéad de Valera are exceedingly rare and of significant historical and collector interest.

[L4 1B]