Darrell Figgis, A Chronicle of Jails

Abstract

The nationalist writer and politician Darrell Figgis (1882–1925) was born to an Anglo-Irish family in Rathmines, Dublin, and raised in India. He worked for his uncle’s tea brokerage business in London and Calcutta between 1898 and 1910, after which he became an editorial advisor to the publishers Dent & Sons. His first poetry collection, A Vision of Life (1909), was quickly followed by his debut novel, Broken Arcs (1911), and a critical study of Shakespeare. Figgis’s prolific output continued over the next decade, taking in freelance journalism, literary and historical studies, political tracts and more novels, including The Return of the Hero (1923), published under the pseudonym ‘Michael Ireland’. Figgis’s republican activism increased following his return to Ireland in 1913 and, with Erskine Childers, he was instrumental in the purchase and landing of German arms for the Irish Volunteers at Howth in 1914. He later served as honorary secretary to Sinn Féin and was a member of the first Dáil Éireann, chairing the committee that drafted the Irish Constitution of 1922. Figgis committed suicide in Bloomsbury, London in October 1925, within days of the death of his partner Rita North and less than a year after his wife Millie took her own life.

(Dublin: Talbot Press, 1917). 130pp.; pp. 64–9; 74; 79–80.