
A Short History of the Irish Volunteers
John Bulmer Hobson (1883–1969) was a leading member of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) before the Easter Rising in 1916.[1] Though he was a member of the organisation that planned the Rising, he was opposed to it being carried out, and attempted to prevent it. He is also notable for swearing Patrick Pearse into the IRB in late 1913. Hobson was, along with Tom Clarke one of the driving forces behind the resurgence of the IRB and was an leading light in the nationalist Dungannon club movement. Hosbon joined the IRB's Supreme Council in 1911 and was secretary and a member of the Volunteers provisional council and played a key role in the founding and development of the force. Hobson opposed the 1916 rising and withdrew from political activities after the Rising. This book is his account of the formation and development of the Irish Volunteers.
Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.
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What the reading experience may hold
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Nonfiction
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Balanced tone · Measured pace
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
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- ISBN-13
- 978-0-3427-9143-9
- Language
- English
- Edition record
- OL32456826M
A more thoughtful way into this book
This guide uses the edition details and category signals above to help you choose deliberately. It does not replace the author's work or a full review.
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
Begin with its place in Nonfiction, then notice where the book resists that label.
Read for connection, not completion.
Mark one passage that sharpens the book's central concern and one that complicates it. That tension often reveals more than a quick summary.
Three questions to carry with you
- Whose perspective organizes the story, and whose perspective remains outside it?
- Which sources or lived experiences carry the author’s central argument?
- How does the book change the way you understand its larger subject?
Editorial framework by Wesley Bryan, BookenDeX Founder and Editor.







