This 1932 work is another of Gabrielle Long Campbell's historical novels, this one written as "Marjorie Bowen" and recounting the crushing of the planned uprising of the United Irishmen in 1798. Its focus is Lord Edward Fitzgerald - Edward Fitzgerald, I should say, since he notoriously renounced his own title as a sign of his political convictions - the younger brother of the Duke of Leinster, a family uncomfortably situated between their English connections and their Irish sympathies. The narrative follows Fitzgerald from the early firing of his revolutionary tendencies by his first-hand experiences in America and France, his eventual commitment to the United Irishmen, by then an illegal organisation, and the disastrous end to the planned Irish rebellion. Dark Rosaleen is overall a rather depressing work, and not just because of the air of doom that necessarily infuses the story. Edward Fitzgerald, as written, is so naïve and gormless as to be perfectly exasperating, the worst possible conspirator for all that his aristocratic background makes him an attractive prospect in theory; while his impulsive marriage, based on a girl's chance resemblance to a romantic fantasy he has carried from childhood, is creepy rather than touching. (From what I can gather, this novel whitewashes Fitzgerald, who apparently favoured extreme and bloody revolutionary measures. As written he reminded me of the equally annoying "hero" of Walter Scott's Waverley.) Ultimately, the real interest of Dark Rosaleen lies less its main storyline than in the early passages describing Fitzgerald's visit to France just at the time when the moderates were losing control of the Revolution and events beginning to spiral out of control. Fitzgerald's observation about conditions in France, "The cause is right but the people all wrong", ironically foreshadows his own efforts for Ireland.

    "And you, too?" said Fitzgerald. "Is that your aim?" He looked straight at the other. "You want first an armed rising and then a landing of a French force in Ireland?"
    Mr. Sheares replied boldly: "We have not got, so far, such a plan yet, sir, but I hope that will be the end of it."
    He said no more, but tactfully left Fitzgerald to the thoughts that this speech must provoke.
    A free Ireland, a country liberated by the force of her own arms, once again with her own flag, her own properties, her own arts and culture, a free nation among the free nations of Europe. A people, almost exterminated by hundreds of years of systematic oppression, lawless cruelty and internal divisions, once more raised, triumphant. To an enthusiastic and enlightened mind such a prospect was almost irresistible. Fitzgerald felt all the excitement of the French days of '92 return...