The Éamon Donnelly Collection
The Collection comprises documents dating from 1881 to 1972, but mostly from the 1930s and early 1940s.
They are the personal and political papers of the Nationalist and Republican politician, Éamon Donnelly (1877–1944). Donnelly was elected by constituencies in both the north and south of Ireland: Armagh (1925–29), Laois-Offaly (1933–27) and West Belfast (1942–44). Originally a member of Sinn Féin, he joined Fianna Fáil after its formation in 1926.
A great organiser, Donnelly served as director of elections for both parties. As a result of his political convictions and activities he was imprisoned on a number of occasions. He was an ardent anti-partitionist and, increasingly, by the mid-1930s, Donnelly had become disillusioned with Fianna Fáil’s lack of progress on the partition issue.
Strengths of Collection
The collection contains c.400 documents, including correspondence, speeches/lectures, photographs and contemporary newspaper cuttings.
The correspondence is from leading figures in Irish nationalism (male and female), including Éamon de Valera, Michael Collins, William O’Brien, Cahir Healy, Mary MacSwiney, Maud Gonne MacBride, Kathleen Clarke and, the contemporary author of The Irish Republic, Dorothy Macardle.
The predominant correspondent in the collection is Cahir Healy, whose letters to Donnelly constitute an important archive on Northern Nationalism, in the 1930s and early 1940s. The Healy letters are given added significance as the other side of the correspondence can be viewed among the Healy papers in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and the other side of the Donnelly-MacSwiney correspondence can be consulted in the University College Dublin Archives.
As a whole the collection provides an insight into what it was to be a northern nationalist involved in Irish politics in the early twentieth century. It sheds invaluable light on the career of Éamon Donnelly and deals with important topics from the period such as the debate over abstentionism and the campaigns for nationalist unity and anti-Partition.
Among the Collection are items of local and national significance. There is a handwritten police description of Michael Collins, an autograph book belonging to Donnelly, and material relating to the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Daniel Mannix, who was refused entry to Northern Ireland in 1925. Donnelly’s Exclusion Order and related train ticket, telegrams connected to his various elections in the north and south of Ireland, and his 1933 jail journal also form part of the collection. The latter, in particular, is significant because of the insight it offers into what he read, containing quotations from books on various revolutions throughout the world, as well as displaying his interest in classical history, science and religion.
