Commons 1820-1832

The main source for what follows are O’Connell’s private letters, as taken from his descendant M.R. O’Connell’s Corresp. of Daniel O’Connell, 8 vols. (1972-80), which replaced W.J. Fitzpatrick’s two vol. edn. of 1888. His public letters and extra-parliamentary speeches were partially printed in John O’Connell’s Select Speeches of Daniel O’Connell (1865 edn.), which is largely a reworked version of his Life and Speeches of Daniel O’Connell (1846), although neither work took his father’s career beyond 1825. There are many lives, but the standard biography is now Oliver MacDonagh, Hereditary Bondsman: Daniel O’Connell, 1775-1829 (1988) and Emancipist: Daniel O’Connell, 1829-47 (1989), which was reprinted in one vol. as O’Connell (1991). Seán O’Faoláin, King of the Beggars (1970 edn.) is still admired for its evocative force. A good brief introduction is Daniel O’Connell (1998 edn.) by Fergus O’Ferrall, whose Catholic Emancipation: Daniel O’Connell and the Birth of Irish Democracy, 1820-30 (1985) is the best account of the emancipation campaign. For his parliamentary following, see J.H. Whyte, ‘Daniel O’Connell and the Repeal Party’, Irish Hist. Stud. xi (1958-9), 297-316, and A. Macintyre, The Liberator: Daniel O’Connell and the Irish Party, 1830-1847 (1965). The 20th-century historiographical rehabilitation of O’Connell, after decades of condemnation inspired by his nationalist successors (for which see D. McCartney, ‘Changing Image of O’Connell’, in Daniel O’Connell: Portrait of a Radical ed. K.B. Nowlan and M.R. O’Connell, 19-31, and M.R. O’Connell, ‘Collapse and Recovery’, in Daniel O’Connell: The Man and his Politics ed. M.R. O’Connell, 53-60), has mainly been in the form of articles, or collections of them, as indicated in this and later endnotes.