Life
1902- [occas. Léon, and commonly O’Broin; err. Ó Bróin];
b. Dublin; ed. CBS, UCD; King’s Inns; active in War of Independence;
Bar, 1924; Gaelic League secretary; civil servant, 1925-67; editor of Maria Legionis, the organ of Frank Duff’s Legion of Mary;
sec. of Posts and Telegraphs, 1948-67; MRIA; Pres. Irish Hist. Soc, 1973;
member of folklore commission; plays, short stories, biographies and histories.
DIW
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Works
Fiction & miscellaneous (in Irish), Arus na nGábhadh agus Scéalta Eile
(Dublin 1923); Ag Stracadh leis an Saol agus Scéalta Eile
(Dublin:
Fallon [as Muinntir C. S. Ó Fallamhain] 1929), 107pp.; An Rún agus Scéalta Eile (Dublin 1933); B éal na hUaighe agus Sgéalta Eile (Baile Átha Cliath: A. Thom & Comh 1927), 149pp.; Miss Crookshank agus Coirp Eile (Dublin: Sairseal & Dill 1951)
[bodies preserved in S. Michan’s]; Miss Crookshank agus Emmet (Dublin: Sairseal & Dill 1954); Comhcheilg sa Chaisleán
(Dublin 1963) [biog.]; Na Sasanaigh agus Eirí Amach na Casca
(Dublin: Sáirséal agus Dill 1967), trans. and rep .
as Dublin Castle and the 1916 Rising (Helicon: 1966)].
Plays (in Irish), Slan Muirisg (1944), An Boisgín Ceoil: Saoilneas aon-mhíre (BÁC: Oifig an tSoláthair 1945). 20pp.; An Oíche úd i mBeithil (1949). Translations incl. An Maidíneach (Dublin 1971). QRY: Tristan Bernard: l’Anglais tel qu’on le parle Irish (Dublin: Oifig An Tsolathair 1938).
Translations., Cúig drámaí, ar n-a dtionntódh go Gaedhilg do Leon Ó Broin (Baile átha Cliath: Oifig Diolta Foillseacháin Rialtais 1931), 222pp. [‘Ní mar a síltear bítear /E. & O.E’ by Eliot C. Williams; ‘Ruaidhrí Réamhráidhte/Rory Aforesaid’ by John Brandane; ‘An Fear ar an gCasán/The man on the kerb’ by Alfred Sutro; ‘Lapa an Ápa/The monkey’s paw’ by William W. Jacobs; ‘Clann na Gealaighe/Children of the Moon’ by Martin Flavin]; An Fuadach di [R. L. Stevenson, Kidnapped] (1931); Cogadh na Reann (1934) [H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds], et al.
English, Parnell ( Baile Átha Cliath: Oifig an tSoláthair [1937]), 566pp.; Emmet (BÁC: Sáirséal & Dill, 1954), 271pp.; The Unfortunate Mr Emmet (Dublin: 1958), 198pp. [trans. of Irish vers.]; Dublin Castle and the Rising: The Story of Sir Matthew Nathan (Dublin: Helicon 1966), 200pp., and Do. [rev. edn.] (London: Sidgwick & Jackson 1970; NYU Press 1971), 192pp., ill. [8 pls.]; Na Sasanaigh agus Eirí Amach na Casca (Dublin: Sáirséal agus Dill 1967), and Do. [trans. of Dublin Castle]; Charles Gavan Duffy, Patriot and Statesman: The Story of Charles Gavan Duffy (Dublin: Duffy 1967); The Chief Secretary: Augustine Birrell in Ireland (London: Chatto & Windus; Edinburgh: Archon 1969), viii, 232pp., ill. [12 pls.]; Fenian Fever: The American Dilemma (London: Chatto & Windus, 1971; NY UP), x, 264pp. [infra]; Michael Collins [Gill’s Irish Lives] (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1980), 156pp.; ed., In Great Haste: Letters of Michael Collins and Kitty Kiernan (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1983); Just Like Yesterday: An Autobiography (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1985), 250pp.; The Chief Secretary (London 1969); Revolutionary Underground (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1976), x, 254pp.; Memoir of Joseph Brennan, civil servant and first Governor of Central Bank Dublin (Inst. Publ. Adman. [1982]), 183pp.; Protestant Nationalists in Revolutionary Ireland, The Stopford Connection (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1985); W . E. Wylie and the Irish Revolution 1916-1921 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1989), viii, 151pp.
Articles, ‘Maurice Moore and the National Volunteers’, in The Irish Sword (Winter 1976); ‘Just Like Yesterday’ Leon O’Broin’s memoir of O’Faoláin’s meeting with Frank Duff, in “O’Faoláin Special Issue”, ed. Seán Dunne, Cork Review (Cork 1991), p.77-78; based on experience as editor of Maria Legionis; this encounter concerned with censorship and the church, led to the formation of a shortlived society called Common Ground.
Bibliographical details
Fenian Fever:
An Anglo-American Dilemma (London: Chatto & Windus 1971),
264pp., index. Bio-note, until recently civil servant; experience in depts.
of finance and education, permanent head of Post Office, 1948; represented
Ireland at Universal Postal Union, etc.; wartime Regional Commissioner
and Vice-pres. Broadcasting Union; bilingual writer, publications include
works on Parnell and Robert Emmet; The Chief Secretary, a most
successful account of Birrell’s Irish period; a study of Dublin Castle
in 1916. Listed facing title, Parnell; Charles Gavan Duffy; The Unfortunate
Mr Emmet; Dublin Castle and the 1916 rising; The Chief Secretary. Epigraph,
‘After the Fenian fever of the last two years, constitutional conflicts
appear flat to the masses’ (Lord Mayo to Disraeli, 12 Aug. 1868).
Ded. Breandán mac Giolla Choille, Keeper of Irish State Paper Office.
CONTENTS by chaps., Conspiracy; The Escape from Richmond Bridewell; Fenianism
in the Army; A Change of Government; The Watch on Stephens; Preparations
for a Rising in Ireland; Colonel Kelly in Command; On Tallaght Hill; The
Rising Outside Dublin; Trials and Tribulations; ‘The Manchester Martyrs’;
The Explosion at Clerkenwell; The Fever Passes. Notes, Bibliography, index.
Bibl. includes manuscript sources and inter al., Robert Anderson, Sidelights
on the Home Rule Movement (1906), and The Lighter Side of Official
Life (1910); Marcus Bourke, John O’Leary (1967); Thomas
N. Brown, Irish American Nationalism (1966); Frederick Moir Bussy, Irish Conspirators (1910); William D’Arcy, The Fenian Movement
in the United States (1947); Joseph Denieffe, A Personal Narrative
of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood (1906); John Devoy, Recollections
of an Old Rebel (1929); J. L. Hammond, Gladstone and the Irish
Nation (1938); Brian Jenkins, Fenians and Anglo-American Relations
during Reconstruction (1969); Henri Le Caron, Twenty-Five Years
in the Secret Service (1892); Donal McCartney, ‘The Church and
Fenianism’, in Irish University Review, vol. IV, 3 (1967);
R. B. McDowell, The Irish Adminstration 1801-1914 (1964); Breandán
Mac Giolla Choille, ‘Fenian Documents in the State paper Office,
in Irish Hist. Studies, XVI 63; Peadar MacSuibhne, Paul Cullen
and His Contemporaries (1961-65); Philip Magnus, Gladstone (1954);
T. W. Moody, ‘Irish-American Nationalism’, in Irish Hist.
Studies, XV, 60; Moody, ‘Fenianism, Home Rule and Land War’,
Chp. 18 of The Course of Irish History; Moody, ed., The Fenian
Movement (1968); E. R. Norman, The Catholic Church in the Age of
Rebellion 1859-1873 (1965); Tomás Ó Fiaich, ‘The
Clergy and Fenianism 1860-1870’, in Irish Eccles. Record,
Vol. 109, 2; John O’Leary, Fenians and Fenianism (1896); Seán
Ó Lúing, John Devoy (1961); Richard Pigott, Recollections
of an Irish Nationalist Journalist (1882); John Rutherford, The
Secret History of the Fenian Conspiracy (1877); Desmond Ryan, The
Phoenix Flame (1937), Ryan, Fenian Chief [James Stephens] (1967);
Ryan & William O’Brien, eds., Devoy’s Postbag (1948-1953);
T. D. Sullivan, Troubled Times in Irish Politics (1905); T. D.,
A. M., and D. B. Sullivan, Speeches from the Dock (n.d.); Charles
C. Tansell, America and the Fight for Irish Freedom (1957); David
Thornley, Isaac Butt and Home Rule (1964).
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Commentary
Oliver
Snoddy, ‘Notes on Literature in Irish Dealing with the Fight for Freedom’, in Éire-Ireland,
3, 2, Summer 1968 [pp.138-48], writes of Na Sasanaigh agus Eirí Amach na Casca (Dublin: Sáirséal agus Dill 1967): ‘It deals with the Rising from the viewpoint of the authorities in Dublin Castle, a fresh, original and most interesting treatment of the subject.’ (p.148 .)
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Notes
Whence title?: ‘[T]he unfortunate Emmet’ is a phrase
in the prefatory remarks of Henry Brereton Code’s Insurrection
of 23 July 1803.
Page-header: In Protestant Nationalists in Revolutionary Ireland: The Stopford Connection (1985), the abbreviated title is reproduced as a left-hand page header under the form ‘Protestant Nationalism, &c.’, passim.
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