The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps)

Author’s edition. Glasgow : Cameron & Ferguson, circa 1900. Octavo, half calf over green cloth (rubbed and scuffed), spine with gilt bands, gilt-lettered red morocco title label, marbled endpapers with bookseller’s ticket of A. H. Spencer, Melbourne, pp. vi; 220, internally clean. A later printing of Mitchel’s 1861 treatise criticising British policy during the Great Famine of 1845 – 52. Mitchell argued that while the potato blight was a natural event, the resulting famine was a deliberate political strategy by the British government to decimate the Irish peasantry through the export of agricultural produce while the local population was starving.