[Count Plunkett] George Noble Plunkett

Life
1851-1948; b. Dublin; ed. Clongowes, then Nice, S. France [var. vice-versa DIH], and TCD; Bar 1886; travelled abroad, chiefly in Italy, was created a Papal Count by Leo XIII for work for the papacy; President of Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language; Vice-President National Literary Society; published monograph on Sandro Botticelli (London: Bell 1900) and other fine art studies incl. Pinelli (1904), The Architecture of Dublin (1908); Dir. of Science and Arts Museum, Dublin (National Museum), 1907-16; Vice-President RIA,1908-09, 1911-14; President Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland,; contrib. Irish Monthly, The Nation, The Irishman, The Flag of Ireland, the Boston Pilot, and North and South;

imprisoned after 1916, in which his son Joseph Mary Plunkett participated among the leadership and was executed; elected MP North Roscommon, 1917, undertaking not to go to London, and hence the first to withdraw from Westminster; served as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dáil Éireann 1919-21; acted as Paris Peace Conference delegate; accompanied de Valera to London, July 1921; appt. Min. of Fine Arts, 1921-22; opposed the Treaty; returned for Roscommon, 1922-27 but abstained from taking seat; wrote God’s Chosen Festival (1877); co-ed. The Jacobite War in Ireland (1894); ed. Stokes’s Early Christian Art in Ireland (1911-15); Introduction to Church Symbolism (1932), and poems in Arrows (1921) and Echoes (1928); there is a pencil portrait by Seán O’Sullivan [NGI]. DIB DIH

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Criticism
Patrick Keatinge, ‘The Formative Years of the Irish Diplomatic Service’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 3 (Autumn 1971), pp.57-71.

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Commentary
W. P. Ryan, The Irish Literary Revival (1894), Count Plunkett writes as ‘Killeen’ [also the name of the favourite and most successful horse raised by his contemporary, Lord Fingall, and the name of a family home] in the Irish Monthly ... Other contributions in Irish and American newspapers; also in Hibernia, which he edited; only one volume, God’s Chosen Festival (1877) [152]

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