Blind Love was an unfinished novel by Wilkie Collins, which he left behind on his death in 1889. It was completed by historian and novelist Sir Walter Besant.
Collins's novel had already begun serialization in The Illustrated London News , even though the author had not yet completed it. (It ran from 6 July, 1889, to 28 December of that year. [1] [2] ) When it was published in book form on 1890, the volume included Besant's preface explaining the circumstances of the collaboration.
Collins had started writing the novel in 1887, when newspapers were full of stories about Fenian violence in the wake of the previous year's defeat of the First Irish Home Rule Bill. Collins frequented Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese off London's Fleet Street and borrowed some traits for his male protagonist from John O'Connor Power who was also well known in the convivial tavern. [3] Collins links the Irish Question to the Woman Question. The novel recounts the story of Lord Harry Norland, a member of a squad of political assassins; the book's heroine is Iris Henley, a bold and nonconformist Englishwoman who falls in love with the Irish Norland despite his criminal activities (the "blind love" of the title). [4] The title was originally to have been Lord Harry, the colloquial name for the devil.
William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright known especially for The Woman in White (1859), a mystery novel and early sensation novel, and for The Moonstone (1868), which established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel and is also perhaps the earliest clear example of the police procedural genre.
Charles Stewart Parnell was an Irish nationalist politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) in the United Kingdom from 1875 to 1891, Leader of the Home Rule League from 1880 to 1882, and then of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1882 to 1891, who held the balance of power in the House of Commons during the Home Rule debates of 1885–1886. He fell from power following revelations of a long-term affair, and died at age 45.
Isaac Butt was an Irish barrister, editor, politician, Member of Parliament in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, economist and the founder and first leader of a number of Irish nationalist parties and organisations. He was a leader in the Irish Metropolitan Conservative Society in 1836, the Home Government Association in 1870, and the Home Rule League in 1873. Colin W. Reid argues that Home Rule was the mechanism Butt proposed to bind Ireland to Great Britain. It would end the ambiguities of the Act of Union of 1800. He portrayed a federalised United Kingdom, which would have weakened Irish exceptionalism within a broader British context. Butt was representative of a constructive national unionism. As an economist, he made significant contributions regarding the potential resource mobilisation and distribution aspects of protection, and analysed deficiencies in the Irish economy such as sparse employment, low productivity, and misallocation of land. He dissented from the established Ricardian theories and favoured some welfare state concepts. As editor he made the Dublin University Magazine a leading Irish journal of politics and literature.
Annie Besant was a British socialist, theosophist, freemason, women's rights and Home Rule activist, educationist, and campaigner for Indian nationalism. She was an ardent supporter of both Irish and Indian self-rule. She became the first female president of the Indian National Congress in 1917.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1890.
Sir David Wilkie was a Scottish painter, especially known for his genre scenes. He painted successfully in a wide variety of genres, including historical scenes, portraits, including formal royal ones, and scenes from his travels to Europe and the Middle East. His main base was in London, but he died and was buried at sea, off Gibraltar, returning from his first trip to the Middle East. He was sometimes known as the "people's painter".
The Irish Republican Brotherhood was a secret oath-bound fraternal organisation dedicated to the establishment of an "independent democratic republic" in Ireland between 1858 and 1924. Its counterpart in the United States of America was initially the Fenian Brotherhood, but from the 1870s it was Clan na Gael. The members of both wings of the movement are often referred to as "Fenians". The IRB played an important role in the history of Ireland, as the chief advocate of republicanism during the campaign for Ireland's independence from the United Kingdom, successor to movements such as the United Irishmen of the 1790s and the Young Irelanders of the 1840s.
Seán Proinsias Ó Faoláin was one of the most influential figures in 20th-century Irish culture. A short-story writer of international repute, he was also a leading commentator and critic.
Sir Walter Besant was an English novelist and historian. William Henry Besant was his brother, and another brother, Frank, was the husband of Annie Besant.
John O'Leary was an Irish separatist and a leading Fenian. He studied both law and medicine but did not take a degree and for his involvement in the Irish Republican Brotherhood, he was imprisoned in England during the nineteenth century.
John O'Connor Power was an Irish Fenian and a Home Rule League and Irish Parliamentary Party politician and as MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland represented Mayo from June 1874 to 1885. From 1881, he practised as a barrister specialising in criminal law and campaigning for penal reform.
Charles Joseph Kickham was an Irish revolutionary, novelist, poet, journalist and one of the most prominent members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
The term New Departure has been used to describe several initiatives in the late 19th century by which Irish republicans, who were committed to independence from Britain by physical force, attempted to find a common ground for co-operation with groups committed to Irish Home Rule by constitutional means. In the wake of the Fenian Rising of 1867 and the unpopular executions which followed it, Fenianism was popularised and became more moderate, while the Home Rule movement was edging toward radicalism at the same time, laying the framework for the alliance. The term was coined by John Devoy in an anonymous article in the New York Herald on 27 October 1878 in which he laid out a framework for a new policy.
Events from the year 1841 in Ireland
The word Fenian served as an umbrella term for the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and their affiliate in the United States, the Fenian Brotherhood. They were secret political organisations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries dedicated to the establishment of an independent Irish Republic. In 1867, they sought to coordinate raids into Canada from the United States with a rising in Ireland. In the 1916 Easter Rising and the 1919–1921 Irish War of Independence, the IRB led the republican struggle.
Charles Amédée Forestier was an Anglo-French artist and illustrator who specialised in historical and prehistoric scenes, and landscapes.
This is a bibliography of the works of Wilkie Collins.
William Ulick O'Connor Cuffe, 4th Earl of Desart. He succeeded to the title of 6th Baron Desart, 4th Viscount Desart and 4th Earl of Desart on 1 April 1865
The Irish People was a nationalist weekly newspaper first printed in Dublin in 1863 and supportive of the Fenian movement. It was suppressed by the British Government in 1865.
Ricard O'Sullivan Burke was an Irish nationalist, Fenian activist, Union American Civil War soldier, U.S. Republican Party campaigner, and a public-works engineer. Travelling extensively, he performed various jobs. He was involved in two prison escape attempts, in Manchester, where a policeman was shot dead, and in London, where twelve passers-by were blown up.