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www.adams.ieThe History Sale 19
th
April 2016
JOSEPH MARY PLUNKETT:
An important collection of early family letters
Of all the strange assortment of separatists and socialists, poets and dreamers that came together to sign the 1916 Proclamation, the strangest was Joseph Mary Plunkett. Born to a promi-
nent and prosperous Catholic family, his father was a Papal Count and an expert in the fine arts. Educated privately and at Stonyhurst College in England, Plunkett suffered from pulmonary
tuberculosis (then almost untreatable) from an early age. After graduating from UCD he was advised to seek a drier climate, and spent some time in Algeria.
Plunkett was a promising poet and a close friend of Thomas MacDonagh, with whom he co-edited The Irish Review. He joined the IRB and the Irish Volunteers, and became director of
military operations, though he had no significant military experience. He drew up the military strategy for the Rising, based on occupying and holding strategic buildings.
As the Rising approached his illness worsened, and in early 1916 he underwent surgery on glands in his throat. He left a convalescent home to take his place in the GPO, where his aide-de-
camp was Michael Collins. Afterwards he was tried by court-martial and sentenced to death. He married his friend Grace Gifford in a cell in Kilmainham Jail, on the eve of his execution on 4
May 1916. He was not yet 30 when he died, though he could scarcely have lived much longer in any case.
These early family letters and notes date from a period of his life (1908-1912) for which there is little first-hand evidence. They are written without reserve, to his ‘dearest Mums’, to whom
he was evidently very close. They very well illustrate his attractive character, his fluency and wit, his adventurous spirit and a complete absence of self-pity. To the best of our knowledge
they are unpublished, though other material from the period is quoted in Geraldine Plunkett Dillon’s memoir All In The Blood.
74 JOSEPH MARY PLUNKETT [1887-1916]An autograph signed note dated 23 May [19]08, on paper of Stonyhurst College, 1 pp, signed ‘Joseph’, addressed to ‘Dearest Mums’.
‘I got your post card. Hope you’ve had a good time & are not tired. I am quite well & so is G. I wrote to White. Have to catch the post now.’ With a P.T.O. in bold letters at foot of page, but
there is nothing overleaf. Perhaps there was a second page, not now present.
€ 400 - 600