Skip to main content

Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin

Trinity Menu Trinity Search

The Library of Trinity College Dublin

You are here Research Collections > Projects

The Michael Davitt Papers Project

Michael Davitt (1846-1906) was an Irish nationalist, Irish Parliamentary Party MP, investigative journalist, and agrarian campaigner, who is well known for being one of the founders of the Irish National Land League.

A project to catalogue, conserve and digitise the papers of Michael Davitt is currently underway as part of Virtual Trinity Library. This extensive collection was presented to the Library from 1978 to 1980 by Davitt’s son, Cahir Davitt, and includes over 6000 letters, 550 photographs, 60 diaries and notebooks as well as newspaper cuttings, published pamphlets, articles and research for his books on prison life, his time in the USA, Australia and New Zealand and Russia. This material details an important period in Irish history when the focus of Irish nationalism shifted from the revolutionary politics of the Fenian Brotherhood to the constitutional politics of the Irish Parliamentary Party in Westminster and the mass-agrarian movement of the Irish National Land League.

The Davitt papers are one of the most heavily-used historic collections in the Library of Trinity College Dublin. The Michael Davitt Papers Project aims to update the existing catalogue, to digitise and to publish the images online on our Digital Collections platform, to increase the visibility and accessibility of this significant collection. An archivist, a conservator, and a digital photographer were appointed to the project between August and November 2024 and work has begun to make this collection of national importance more widely available.

Slider Images

  1. IE TCD MS 9649/7 Photograph of Michael Davitt from1882.
  2. IE TCD MS 9549 Front cover of Michael Davitt's diary from 1888.
  3. IE TCD MS 9448/3604 Letter from Sebastian Melmoth (Oscar Wilde), Hotel de la Plage, Berneval-sur-Mer, Dieppe, to Michael Davitt circa 1897.
  4. IE TCD MS 9649/18 Cabinet card of Michael Davitt, taken in Moscow during his tour of the Russian Empire.
  5. IE TCD MS 9649/285 Photograph of the passing countryside, taken by Michael Davitt while travelling by train in British Columbia.

Link Images

  • IE TCD MS 9535 Front cover of Michael Davitt's diary from 1882.
  • IE TCD MS 9649/29 Photograph of Michael Davitt at the eviction of the Widow Darcy, Coolgraney, County Wexford in 1887.
  • IE TCD MS 9649/221 Group portrait photograph of Mary Davitt, wife of Michael Davitt, with their children Eileen, Michael, Cahir and Robert Emmet.