Clarke family, association copies Nora Connolly O'Brien. Portrait of a Rebel Father. Dublin, Talbot Press 1935. Mrs....

Clarke family, association copies Nora Connolly O'Brien. Portrait of a Rebel Father. Dublin, Talbot Press 1935. Mrs. Kathleen Clarke's copy (widow of Tom Clarke) with her signature in Irish, Caitl?n Bean Ui Chl?irigh. With Seumas Mac Manus. Ballads of a Country Boy. Dublin, Gill 1905. Inscribed on title page in Irish, 'Do She?ghan Ua Cl?irigh, le meas m?r, ? Sheumas Mac Maghnuis', i.e. 'For John [Daly] Clarke [son of Tom Clarke], with great respect from Seumas Mac Maghnuis.' Attractive association copies. Seumas MacManus was on close terms with the Clarke family when they lived in New York 1901-7; Tom Clarke became a naturalised US citizen in 1905, two years before he returned to Dublin to undertake the revival of the IRB there. John Daly Clarke was their eldest son, born in 1902 and named for his Fenian friend and co-prisoner, Kathleen's uncle; he can have been no more than three or four when this book was inscribed for him. Kathleen Clarke was a niece of John Daly of Limerick. She married Tom Clarke in 1901, and was restrained from taking part in the 1916 Rising only by direct orders to the contrary. She founded the Irish Volunteers Dependants' Fund, and employed Michael Collins as its Secretary on his release from Frongoch in 1917. She was imprisoned in 1918, sharing a cell in Holloway with Maud Gonne and Countess Markiewicz, was elected to the Second Dail and opposed the Treaty. She joined Fianna Fail, was briefly elected to the Dail, and in 1939 she became the first woman to be elected Lord Mayor of Dublin. She left Fianna Fail over the execution of Republicans in the 1940s. Nora Connolly O'Brien, James Connolly's eldest daughter, was a close friend though not a political colleague. Kathleen's son John Daly Clarke was not active in politics. Provenance: Sale of effects from the estate of John Daly Clarke in Dublin some years ago. (2)

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