I visited the National Library today to read ‘The Irish Literary Revival’ by W.P. Ryan (1894). He tells the story of the Southwark Irish Literary Club, founded by Irish ‘apostles of study and culture’.
Early in 1891, at a meeting in Clapham Reform Club, the name was changed to the Irish Literary Society. On February 13, members met to form a committee.
Ryan writes that Michael MacDonagh was associated with the ‘inner history of the society’. MacDonagh, a gifted author and journalist, inherited O’Connor Power’s private papers and used them as a basis for his account of the Home Rule movement.