Magnificent book to be launched in Birr Library

OFFALY HISTORY is inviting the general public to the launch of a magnificent book entitled “The Complete Poems of John De Jean Frazer: the workman poet from Birr" in Birr Library at 5pm on Friday November 18.

Edited by Padraig Turley, Terry Moylan and Laurel Grube and published by Offaly History this is a beautifully produced book which publishes all of the Birr poet's poems in one volume for the first time in many years.

John de Jean Frazer (1804-1852), known as “J. De Jean”, was seen, from the 1840s to the 1900s as second only to Thomas Davis as the poetic voice of Ireland.

His poems of Irish aspiration, and Irish grievance, articulated the programme of the Young Ireland movement and, after his death, were embraced by the Fenian Movement as expressive of their own political campaign for Irish independence.

His first publication was the 1,974-line ‘Eva O’Connor’, a narrative poem of doomed love, told in ten-line verses, a metre of his own devising. This was published, anonymously, in 1826, when he was aged just 22.

He returned to narrative verse in later publications, but most of his output consisted of shorter poems on political subjects which first appeared in such periodicals as The Nation and The Dublin University Magazine, before being collected in later years in two anthologies.

His three published works have been digitised, and the newspapers of the time examined, to recover what is believed to be his complete works, and these have been edited, annotated, and illustrated with musical and other images to bring Frazer’s poetry to a modern readership.