Vivid faces : the revolutionary generation in Ireland, 1890-1923

Vivid Faces Surveys The Lives And Beliefs Of The People Who Made The Irish Revolution: Linked Together By Youth, Radicalism, Subversive Activities, Enthusiasm And Love. Determined To Reconstruct The World And Defining Themselves Against Their Parents, They Were In Several Senses A Revolutionary Generation. The Ireland That Eventually Emerged Bore Little Relation To The Brave New World They Had Conjured Up In Student Societies, Agit-prop Theatre Groups, Vegetarian Restaurants, Feminist Collectives, Volunteer Militias, Irish-language Summer Schools, And Radical Newspaper Offices. Roy Foster's Book Investigates That World, And The Extraordinary People Who Occupied It. Looking Back From Old Age, One Of The Most Magnetic Members Of The Revolutionary Generation Reflected That 'the Phoenix Of Our Youth Has Fluttered To Earth A Miserable Old Hen', But He Also Wondered 'how Many People Nowadays Get So Much Fun As We Did'. Working From A Rich Trawl Of Contemporary Diaries, Letters And Reflections, Vivid Faces Re-creates The Argumentative, Exciting, Subversive And Original Lives Of People Who Made A Revolution, As Well As The Disillusionment In Which It Ended. R.f. Foster. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. "A masterful history of Ireland's Easter Rising told through the lives of ordinary people who forged a revolutionary generation. On Easter Monday, 1916, Irish rebels poured into Dublin's streets to proclaim an independent republic. Ireland's long struggle for self-government had suddenly become a radical and bloody fight for independence from Great Britain. Irish nationalists mounted a week-long insurrection, occupying public buildings and creating mayhem before the British army regained control. The Easter Rising provided the spark for the Irish revolution, a turning point in the violent history of Irish independence. In this highly original history, acclaimed scholar R.F. Foster explores the human dimension of this pivotal event. He focuses on the ordinary men and women, Yeats's 'vivid faces, ' who rose 'from counter or desk among grey / Eighteenth-century houses' and took to the streets. A generation made, not born, they rejected the inherited ways of the Church, their bourgeois families, and British rule. They found inspiration in the ideals of socialism and feminism, in new approaches to love, art, and belief. Drawing on fresh sources, including personal letters and diaries, Foster summons his characters to life. We meet Rosamond Jacob, who escaped provincial Waterford for bustling Dublin. On a jaunt through the city she might visit a modern art gallery, buy cigarettes, or read a radical feminist newspaper. She could practice the Irish language, attend a lecture on Freud, or flirt with a man who would later be executed for his radical activity. These became the roots of a rich life of activism in Irish and women's causes. Vivid Faces shows how Rosamond and her peers were galvanized to action by a vertiginous sense of transformation: as one confided to his diary, 'I am changing and things around me change.' Politics had fused with the intimacies of love and belief, making the Rising an event not only of the streets but also of the hearts and minds of a generation"--Publisher's website. Dec 18