1819 A New and Enlarged Collection of Speeches, By the Right Honourable John Philpot Curran

Description

First Edition, Illustrated, Scarce

Illustrated with a portrait frontispiece.

A lovely edition of the speeches of Irish orator, politician, wit, lawyer and judge John Philpot Curran, who held the office of Master of Rolls in Ireland.

Curran was renowned for his representation in 1780 of Father Neale, a Catholic priest whipped by Anglo-Irish Lord, Viscount Doneraile, and later for his defence of United Irishmen facing capital charges of sedition and treason.

Curran was widely admired in his day and after, with Lord Byron saying 'I have heard that man speak more poetry than I have seen written', and Karl Marx describing him as the greatest people's advocate of the eighteenth century.

With the armorial bookplate of the Earl of Portsmouth to the front pastedown, and the inscription of the Hurstbourne Park Library, 1880, to the verso of the front free endpaper, indicating that the Earl of Portsmouth referred to by the bookplate was Isaac Newton Wallop, 5th Earl of Portsmouth.