Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-1798) was the founder of Irish Republican nationalism. As such his political ideas and the circumstances of his life and early death have become powerful political weapons in the hands of later nationalists. Today his name still arouses strong passions and he is hailed as the first prophet of an independent Ireland.Published originally in 1989, Marianne Elliott’s book was the first major biography of Tone, using a wealth of new material to examine his personal life and public actions. Tracing him from his upbringing as a member of the Protestant elite, through his involvement in Irish radical politics, his exile in America, his secret negotiations with the French and return to Ireland with a French invasion force, to his trial for treason and his suicide while awaiting execution, it was a monumental publication that won numerous awards and gained much praise.This second edition brings this award-winning book up to date with new scholarship, new historical insights and fresh insights by Professor Marianne Elliott herself, making a crucial publication for all scholars and readers of Irish history.

Marianne Elliott ...is better qualified than anyone to crack the Tone conundrum. Her meticulously documented Wolfe Tone balances a narrative of well-judged pace-accelerating as it reaches the climax of Tone's suicide before his execution-with clear, often subtle analysis...This is the fullest account of Tone's life to date; it is readable and warmly but critically sympathetic.

Angus Macintyre Source: Times Literary Supplement

[A] cool, splendidly researched biography...If Marianne Elliott dismantles the myth she in no way debunks the individual. Rather she releases a much more admirable figure, humane, high spirited, cultivated, very much of his turbulent, radical liberal times.

Peter Lennon Source: The Guardian

A work of such thorough and perceptive skill that there will never need to be another.

Source: The Observer

A splendid biography.

John Kavanagh Source: The Irish Post

[Tone] has for the first time received a thorough biography by the talented scholar, Marianne Elliott... Tone himself now comes alive in Elliott's completely researched pages and in her meticulous reconstruction of Tone's exciting world and its rush of events. Superb notes, bibliography, and index, plus a revealing closing essay on the tortuous building of the 'cult of Tone' that followed his death.

Source: Choice

This book puts previous biographies of Tone altogether in the shade. . . . A story in the best sense. . . . Elliott shows a critical and imaginative sympathy with her subject, an approach indispensable to the biographer's understanding. The Wolfe Tone that emerges is historically credible, warts and all, though the warts are mostly of the benign variety.

John A. Murphy Source: The Irish Herald

Mrs. Elliott has written a full and fair biography—a brave book.

Terence de Vere Source: Daily Telegraph

Highly readable and splendidly illustrated, this work must rank as the final assessment of Wolfe Tone. It deserves a wide and appreciative readership.

Seamus Kelters Source: The Irish News

Traces the life of the recognized founder of Irish Republican Nationalism, from his upbringing and education as a member of the Irish Protestant elite, through his involvement in Irish radical politics, his exile in America and secret negotiations in France, to his trial for treason and his suicide while awaiting execution.

Source: British Book News

In Ireland, where the dead hand of history still has the power to inflame political passions, the name of Theobald Wolfe Tone has a special place. Hailed as the founder of Irish Republican nationalism, he is a hero to the Brit-bashing provisional I.R.A. and Sinn Fein, members of which make an annual pilgrimage to his grave in County Kildare. In Ulster, this staunch Protestant is ignored by his countrymen. The advocate of an alliance between Ulster Presbyterians and Roman Catholic peasants against absentee English landowners, Wolfe Tone negotiated with the revolutionary French Republic and welcomed a French invasion of Ireland in 1798. Captured by the British, he was tried for treason and sentenced to hang, a fate he cheated by committing suicide. . . . This book is the definitive scholarly biography.

Source: The Washington Post Book World

Nobody is better qualified to tell this story than Marianne Elliott. She leaves no stone unturned in a masterly trawl through archives in England, Ireland, France and the U. S. A., unearthing much new material on the way. Her command of the sources for the 1780s is awesomely thorough. Whether the issue is piracy, Pacific exploration or daily life in London and Paris, she is familiar with the best and most recent scholarship."—

Frank McLynn Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement

Marianne Elliott's study of Tone does not in any way diminish or demean the Father of Irish Republicanism or his role in the grand cause of Irish Nationalism. Quite the opposite. This book adds strength, stature, and verve to the life and times of Wolfe Tone as he struggled to break the connection with England.

Source: Irish Socialist Review

The creation of Tone as a relic . . . required that he be wrenched out of his historical and political context. The great virtue of Marianne Elliott's biography is that she has placed him firmly back within it.

Thomas Flanagan Source: Newsday

Admirably written, and well illustrated.

Source: The Irish Times

This is an excellent biography: the first life of Tone to be based on extensive research and probably also the last; 'definitive' probably does apply.

Conor Cruise O'Brien Source: The Times (London)

This book puts previous biographies of Tone altogether in the shade. Dr. Elliott brings to her work a specialist knowledge of Franco-Irish relationships in the revolutionary period, and her Partners in Revolution book was an invaluable background for their study of Tone. Her familiarity with a rich array of sources results in a fuller picture of the subject than we've had heretofore, and the French and American contexts are particularly satisfying. All in all, it is unlikely that anything of substance will be added to the Tone story.

Source: Sunday Independent

Tone's attitude to terrorism is explored by Marianne Elliott in the first major biography of the man who is claimed by constitutional nationalists and militant republicans as their inspiration.

Source: Newsletter

Fluently written, skillfully constructed and rigorously scholarly. It draws on an impressive array of sources from archives in Ireland, England, France, and the U. S. A., and, as political biography, it successfully maintains the delicate balance between public and private, between 'life' and 'time'. . . . Dr. Elliott also unearths new information and brings fresh perspectives to bear. . . . Careful research and meticulous detail are the rule. It is a measure of Dr. Elliott's thoroughness, indeed, that alternative readings of Tone's career can be made from the material which she presents.

Jim Smyth Source: Irish Economic and Social History

More than a mere Life, daringly dramatic and romantic in itself, for Tone's story is also that of Ireland republicanism and of the impact of the French Revolution. . . . Dr. Elliott is likely the best qualified Irish historian writing today to have given us this authoritative work. The narrative is beautifully balanced and soundly based on sure groundwork among a wealth of new material in sources ignored or unavailable to former biographers of Theobald Wolfe Tone. This is a lucidly searching study of a most complex character who emerged from the Protestant Irish elite to become the mouthpiece of Irish national aspirations and the catalyst of political and military actions in the heady days of the French Revolution. . . . Dr. Elliott's portrait is full of insights, sensitive and fair-minded because it is thoroughly researched, has a restrained sympathy for her subject and is written in a crisp style. This nonsentimental life of Tone deserves a warm reception and a wide readership.

John McGurk Source: History Today

Elliott is one of only a handful of writers to attempt a biography, and hers is the first that can claim to be exhaustive and authoritative. She succeeds brilliantly. Not only is this the best biography of Tone ever produced, it is certain to be ranked among the very best biographies of any political figure in Irish history.

Gary Owens Source: Canadian Journal of Irish Studies

A major academic achievement.

Maurice R. O'Connell Source: Catholic Historical Review

Sheds much new light both on Tone and his times; and . . . it prompts new and more informed discussion of that key decade in the modern history of Ireland, the 1790s.

Tom Bartlett Source: Linen Hall Review

There have been many accounts of these events, but none so well documented as that given by Marianne Elliott. Partners in Revolution is a veritable tour de force.

John W. Boyle Source: Albion

A splendid scholarly portrait of the man behind the myth, the only one ever likely to be needed. . . . A fine complement to Tone's delightful autobiography.

Robert Kee Source: The Independent on Sunday

[A] detailed and compelling biography of Ireland's major revolutionary figure of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. . . . The figure which emerges from these pages is far more complicated and humane than the icon which myth has long projected. He appears more vulnerable, less powerful and, for all this, more heroic. . . . The most important, and even compelling aspect of this work is the liberation of Tone and his thought from the polemical trap in which he has long been ensnared."—

Kevin O'Neill Source: Social History

[A] beautifully written biography . . . its major fresh contribution to historical understanding is perhaps in the picture it gives of Tone in his pre-French, pre-Revolutionary days. She treads adroitly through what is still a politically loaded subject, using a very solid basis of research to dispose of myths in the subsequent cult of Tone. . . . Her able deployment of the wealth of material that has come to light since Frank MacDermot wrote in 1939, makes this undoubtedly the best biography of Tone available and easily the best written."—

Michael Duffy Source: French History