Bram Stoker, Home Rule and Irish Unity
Palatine Room, National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks
In this talk, Dr. Jason McElligott, Director of Marsh’s Library, will focus on Bram Stoker’s interest in the burning question of his day: proposals for Home Rule for Ireland in the 1880s and 1890s. It will outline Stoker’s views on the matter, and why he was in the gallery of the House of Commons when the Prime Minister, William Gladstone, moved the Home Rule Bill in 1886. It will discuss ideas that Stoker presented in writing to Gladstone for amendments to the Home Rule Bill, which he believed would calm the fears of Ulster unionists about “Rome Rule.”
There is currently much speculation about the possibility of a referendum in the medium to long-term to remove the border in Ireland. This talk suggests that it may be worthwhile to consider what the Dublin-born Stoker thought needed to be done to give confidence to a worried minority in the north-east of the island in the context of proposed constitutional changes.
Dr. Jason McElligott Jason McElligott is the Director of Marsh’s Library. He read for his Ph.D. in modern history at St. John’s College, Cambridge. He was the Research Associate on the Roger Morrice Entring Book Project at Cambridge University (2001-2003), and an IRCHSS Post-Doctoral Fellow in University College Dublin from 2003-2005.
As the ‘J.P.R Lyell Research Fellow in the History of the Early Modern Printed Book’ (2005-2008) he was a full Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. He worked at the Trinity Long Room Hub in Trinity College Dublin from October 2008 and came to Marsh’s in October 2011. Dr McElligott has wide research interests in the field of early modern print culture, and is currently writing a book on white-collar crime in eighteenth-century Dublin.
All ages (Under 18s must be accompanied by a parent / guardian)
