Customer Reviews

Jail Journal 1876 (Hibernia)

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John Mitchel's Jail Journal has become a classic of prison literature, but a reader can find a great deal more. The events in the book take place from about 1848 to 1853, and provide a valuable account of a little-known corner of history. Mitchel's memoir, which traces his life from the time of his conviction by an English court through "transportation" to Australia and escape to the United States, provides a edifying alternative to the Anglophilic views so often encountered in mainstream histories. The going may get a bit slow for the casual reader, but the true history buff will find himself unable to put it down. Mitchel writes with a passion and wit that makes the prose a pleasure. He relates vivid accounts of jury-packing in the English courts, torture of inmates on the island of Bermuda, and above all the spectacle of a country so starved and subjugated by its overlords that it lacked the ambition to fight back. The various episodes Mitchel relates really open the reader's eyes to a largely forgotten era of history. Mitchel is an unapologetic nationalist frustrated not only by the cold, murderous tyranny of England, but the passive attitude of his own countrymen. Mitchel's status as a Protestant nationalist reminds us that many of the early giants of the freedom movement saw past sectarianism much more readily than thier descendants. All students of Irish history should read this impassioned story.