Frederick Douglass and Ireland: In His Own Words. Vol. 2

“Frederick Douglass was not the only black abolitionist to visit Ireland and Britain, but he was the most famous at the time and the most acclaimed and commemorated since then,” writes Kinealy (founding director, Ireland’s Great Hunger Instit., Quinnipiac Univ.) in the introduction to this two-volume work. Douglass (1818–95) has been the subject of both fiction and nonfiction in recent years, and the study and understanding of the formative time and experiences of the African American abolitionist, author, and statesman in Ireland during the 1840s have been uplifted with this groundbreaking work of scholarship. With a detailed time line and an exhaustive assemblage of source notes, across both volumes, this book details Douglass’s travels in Belfast, Cork, Dublin, Waterford, and Wexford in 1845 and 1846 as well as his meeting with Irish political leader Daniel O’Connell, from the reportage and perspective of both American and Irish newspapers. Supported with articles, editorials, and personal letters, the title ably adds insights into Douglass’s lifelong affection for the people of Ireland, his outspoken public advocacy of Irish Home Rule in the United States, and how his 1895 death was memorialized in Ireland.