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38 PROCLAMATION OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC: THE VERY RARE HANDBILL ISSUE, EASTER 1916A letterpress printed copy of the 1916 Proclamation, on newsprint paper, handbill size, 21.8 x 14 cms, identical to a copy sold in these rooms in
April 2011 (lot 506). This copy purchased in these rooms, Lot 733, May 2015 for €7,500. A few small marginal tears, but a very good clean copy.
With a typed sheet (recent) stating this version of the Proclamation was printed during Easter Week, probably on Wednesday April 26 1916, by
Joe Stanley and his staff at O’Keeffe’s printing-house, 3 Halston St., within the area controlled by the Volunteers.
Only three other copies of this handbill are recorded: one in the British National Archives at Kew among the papers of William Wylie, prose-
cuting barrister at the 1916 courts-martial, another at the National Library of Ireland among the Joseph Holloway papers, marked by Holloway
‘1916’, and the Adams 2011 copy (with a Connolly family provenance).
In view of its typography, its scarcity and the provenance of the other known copies, it is very likely that this handbill was printed by Joseph
Stanley during Easter Week, on the same presses as the Second and Third Easter Week bulletins (see O’Reilly’s biography of Stanley). It is thus
the second issue of the Proclamation.
€ 5,000 - 8,000