James (”Brontere”) O’Brien

Life
1805-1864 [nom de plume, “Bronterre”]; b. Granard, Co. Longford; son of tobacco merchant (mother nee Kearney); his father died in the West Indies struggling to recover business losses; ed. locally and selected for Edgeworthstown model school; BA TCD, grad. 1829; commenced law at King’s Inns, Dublin but changed to to Gray’s Inn, London 1830; joined Chartist movement and wrote political articles under pen-name “Bronterre”; associated with Wm. Cobbett and others involved in the war against newspaper ‘stamp’ (or tax); espoused Repeal of the Union and Owenite socialism; ed. Poor Man’s Guardian (prop. Henry Hetherington); trans. Philippe Bounarotti’s Conspiration pour l’Egalité dite de [Gracchus] Babeuf [1828] (1836), invoking "community of property" as the leading principal and advocating in practice nationalisation of land, direct taxation and disestablishment of the church; published first vol. of a life of Robespierre but suffered the confiscation of his papers; answered O’Connell’s attack on trade-unions in short-lived Bronterre’s National Reformer;
 
came into conflict with trade-union moderate William Lovett [LWMA], and left London to join Feargus O’Connor in the Chartist movement of N. England, there editing O’Connor’s Northern Star, to which he largely contributed; engaged in Chartist convention, London 1838; opposed Convention’s decision to call general strike facing Government’s refusal of the Charter - a cautious move endorsed by the Convention, Aug. 1839; accused of sedition and advocating physical force after the Newport uprising and shared imprisonment with O’Connor in Lancaster Castle, April 1840-Sept 1841; quarrelled with O’Connor on their release; suffered deepening poverty with his family and made a precarious moved to Isle of Man and opened a stationers, which supported the National Reformer and Manx Review up to 1847; returned to England and elected to Chartist Convention of 1848, resigning when the planned demonstration on Kennington Common was abandoned in face of Government threats;
 
returned to politics to form National Reform League for Peaceful Regeneration of Society addressing public education, decent poor law and other foundational issues of social democracy; lectured at at John St. Institute and establ. living the Eclectic Institute in Soho; rescued from dire poverty in 1859 by a Testimonial Fund raised by followers including Patrick Hennessy and Charles and James Francis Murray, living in Pentonville, London, where died on 23 Dec. 1864; survived by his wife and four children; his papers collected and published by Martin Boon and friends as The Rise, Progress and Phases of Human Slavery (1885). ODNB PI DIB RIA

[ This notice owes much to the article on O’Brien by Fergus A. D’Arcy in the Dictionary of Irish Biography (RIA 2009) - online; accessed 28.06.2024. ]

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Works
Books
  • Buonarroti’s history of Babeuf’s Conspiracy for Equality; with the Author’s Reflections on the Causes & Character of the French Revolution, and his estimate of the leading men and events of that epoch. Also, his views of democratic government, community of property, and political and social equality. Trans. [...] and illustrated by original notes, &c. by Bronterre [pseud.] (London: H. Hetherington, 1836.), 486pp. [ i.e., 1 p.l., [iii]-xxiv, [4], [5]-408pp. 19cm.]
  • The Life and Character of Maximilian Robespierre: Proving by facts and arguments, that that much-calumniated person was one of the greatest men, and one of the purest and most enlightened reformers, that ever existed in the world:[...] By James Bronterre O'Brien. Vol. 1 [but no Vol. 2] (London: J. Watson [1837]), viii, 522 [see details].
  • The Rise, Progress, and Phases of Human Slavery: How It Came into the World, and How It Shall be Made to Go Out / by James Bronterre O'Brien (London: W. Reeves 1885), viii, 148pp., il. [port.], 23cm [sel. writings edited by Martin Boon, et al.]
Pamphlets  
  • To the Distressed Classes on the Present Famine Prices of Bread and Other Necessaries [National Reform Tracts, 5] ([London]: [n. pub. 1855), 8pp. [Signed: A Member of the National Reform League, i.e. J.B. O'Brien; dated November 1855 (p.8); title from caption.
  • Labour’s Wrongs and Labour’s Remedy: address to the trades of Great Britain and Ireland ([S.l.] [185-?]), 4p.
Poetry (satire)
  • Ode to Lord Palmerston / by James Bronterre O'Brien ([London]: [n. pub] [1856]), 8pp. [title from caption; date 21st July 1856].
  • An Ode to Louis Napoleon Bonaparte ([London] [1857), 1 sh., fol.; Do. as An Epistolary ode to Napoleon Bonaparte London [1857]
  • An elegy on the death of Robespierre, with an historic sketch of the three assemblies which made the revolution of 1789; to which is added a brief notice of Robespierre’s public life, by James Bronterre O'Brien (London : G. J. Holyoake & Co. [1857]), 16pp., 18cm.
  • A vision of hell, or, Peep into the realms below, alias, Lord Overgrown’s dream: describing his lordship’s fancied reunion with the late Sir Robert Peel in the regions below, his reception therein, and what descriptions of persons he found there: being the only true account, hitherto published, of the denizens of those regions, and of the qualifications that lead thereto: A poem / by James Bronterre O'Brien (London: G. G. Holyoake & Co. [1859]), 16pp., 18cm.
Journalism
  • The Poor man’s Guardian, and Repealer’s Friend [ed. by J.B. O'Brien], No.1-13 (London [1843]), cm.24.
  • The National Reformer, and Manx Weekly Review of home and foreign affairs [ed. by J. B. O'Brien.] No. 1-35, n.s. (Douglas 1846), 47pp.
  • The Social Reformer, ed. by J. B. O'Brien and friends, Vol. 1, nos. 1-11 [(London 1849).
  • Bronterre’s Letters. no. 1-15. [A series of cuttings from newspapers, including certain material additional to the Letters.]
    • (?1836) [imperfect copy in BL only; lacking Letters No. 8, 13, and the end of no. 15; No. 6 is wrongly numbered 7].

Num. pamphlets writings incl. State Socialism (1850); Bronterre O’Brien’s European Letters (1851); Sermons on the Day of Public Fast and Humiliation for England’s isasters in the Crimea (1856); The Rise, Progress and Phases of Human Slavery (1885).

Bibliographical details
The Life and Character of Maximilian Robespierre: Proving by facts and arguments, that that much-calumniated person was one of the greatest men, and one of the purest and most enlightened reformers, that ever existed in the world: also containing Robespierre’s principal discourses, addresses, reports, and projects of law, &c., in the National assembly, National convention, Commune of Paris, and the popular societies; with the author’s reflections on the principal events and leading men of the French revolution, etc., etc., etc. / By James Bronterre O'Brien. Vol. 1 [no Vol. 2]. (London: J. Watson [1837]), viii, [3]-522 pages 19 cm [available at HathiTrust - online [poor copy]; ded. ְ‘To the Radical and Social Reformers of great Britain and Ireland’, with Pref. beginning: ‘My Friends and Fellow-labourers [...]’

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Criticism
Asa Briggs, ‘Fergus O’Connor and J Bronterre O’Brien’, in Leaders and Workers ed. J. W. Boyle [Thomas Davis Lectures] (Cork 1966).

Some pages from The Life and Character of Maximilian Robespierre (1837)
[...]
—HathiTrust - online; 28.06.2024 [with some imperfect page-images]

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References

D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (odges Figgis 1912) - cites Ode to Lord Palmerston, London, 1856, 16mo; An Ode to Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, London, 1857, folio sheet; An Elegy on the Death of Robbspierre, with life, etc., London, 1857, 16mo; A Dissertation and Elegy on the Life and Death of the Immortal Maximilian Robespierre, etc., London, 1859, 12mo; A Vision of Hell, or a Peep into the Realms Below, alias Lord Overgrown’s Dream, etc., a poem (chap-book), London, 1859, 8vo. - and remarks: ‘Author of one or two other political works, and a celebrated Chartist. Was, in fact, the “brains” of that movement. He was a native of Granard, Co. Longford, was born in 1805, was educated at Edgeworths-town School, graduated B.A. T.C.D., 1829, entered Gray’s Inn as a student, and died in poverty December 23, 1864.’

Desmond Fennell, ‘Irish Socialist Thought’, in The Irish Mind, ed. Richard Kearney (1985), b. Granard, Co. Longford; ed. TCD, worked under William Thompson in co-operative movement; chief intellectual of Chartism, nicknamed ‘the schoolmaster’ by Feargus O’Connor; admired figures of French socialism, Babeuf, Blanqui, and Saint-Simon; writings in periodicals; first to use term social democrat in English; fnd. National Reform League, early 1850s, formulating evolution socialist programme. (Fennell, p.194.)

 

Notes
Portrait, Bronterre O’Brien (seated) and Fergus O’Connor in 1939), Irish Labour History Museum, engraving; printed in History Ireland (summer 1994), p.27.

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