Laurence Marley

Michael Davitt: Freelance Radical and Frondeur Laurence Marley

Michael Davitt (1846-1906) is popularly known as the founder of the Irish National Land League and as the architect of the agrarian campaign of 1879-82. However, while the Land War was pivotal in Irish history, Davitt's lesser-known freelance political career after 1882, during which he engaged with a diverse range of issues and causes from the Boer War to Zionism, reveals a much more complex and, at times, contradictory political figure than that previously represented in Irish historiography. This book - now in paperback - is the first sustained study of Davitt's political career in its totality and views him in a broad political context of labor activism and international radicalism.