Some Suggestions for Further Reading

In putting together this reader I have made use of many collections of Connolly’s writings, biographies about his life and politics, and books more generally covering the period in which he was active. Here are some of those I found most useful.

For collections of Connolly’s writings, The Lost Writings (Pluto Press, 1997), introduced and edited by Aindrias Ó Cathasaigh, stands out and is extremely useful. Donal Nevin edited two large and very helpful collections; the first is the two-volume set James Connolly: Political Writings 1893–1916 (SIPTU, 2011) and Writings of James Connolly: Collected Works (SIPTU, 2011). The second is Between Comrades: James Connolly Letters and Correspondence, 1889–1916 (Gill & Macmillan, 2007). Thanks to the diligence of Einde O’Callaghan, many of Connolly’s writings are also available through the Marxist Internet Archive at www.marxists.org.

Of biographies, Nevin’s James Connolly: A Full Life (Gill & Macmillan, 2006) is the most comprehensive. Seán Mitchell’s A Rebel’s Guide to James Connolly (Bookmarks, 2016) is an excellent, short, and precise introduction to Connolly’s life and politics. Kieran Allen’s The Politics of James Connolly (Pluto Press, 1990) and Lorcan Collins’s James Connolly: 16 Lives (O’Brien’s Press, 2012) are also excellent for analysis and political perspective.

For books about the general period, see Pádraig Yeates, Lockout: Dublin 1913 (Gill Books, 2001); Kieran Allen, 1916: Ireland’s Revolutionary Tradition (Pluto Press, 2016); Maurice Walsh, Bitter Freedom: Ireland in a Revolutionary World (Liveright, 2017); Conor Kostick, Revolution in Ireland: Popular Militancy 1917 to 1923 (Cork University Press, 2nd revised ed., 2009); Carl Reeve and Ann Barton Reeve, James Connolly and the United States: The Road to the Irish Rebellion (Humanities Press, 1978); and Emmet O’Connor, A Labour History of Ireland, 1824–2000 (UCD Press, 2011).

The National Library of Ireland in Dublin has an extensive collection of James Connolly material collected by William O’Brien available for viewing in the Manuscript Room and on microfilm.