Collected Writings, 1868-1906

Michael Davitt (1846-1906), father of the Land League, Member ofParliament, labour campaigner, writer and public speaker, was one of the central Irish figures of the late nineteenth century. Closely involved in the land question, Home Rule and labour issues, he wrote articulately and reflectively on these and many other important and problematic subjects, leaving historians an invaluable resource, not only of biographical material, but also of insights into the major questions of his day. The importance of Davitt's contribution alone would justify the publication of a collected works.

However, it might also be argued that by looking at his writing as a body of work, the man and ideas that emerge are both more wide-ranging and more complex than the traditional identification of Davitt as founder of the Irish Land League, important as this was in securing for Irish tenant farmers the right to own their land. In particular, it demonstrates the significance of his non-Irish interests, the breadth of his social thinking and his concern to link the land question with the cause of labour. This collection includes his six books, all his pamphlets, and his major writings for journals such as the Contemporary Review and the Nineteenth Century.