John Boyle O’Reilly’s status as an Irish nationalist was burnished by his capital conviction for treason in 1866, a sentence later commuted to twenty years penal servitude. He served eighteen difficult months in three separate jails before being transported to Western Australia. A daring escape, later fictionalised in his semi-autobiographical novel Moondyne Joe, brought him to Boston, Massachusetts, where he made his name and fortune as the editor and proprietor of the Pilot, a leading Catholic newspaper. The Pilot becamea powerful vehicle for supporting Irish migrants as well as an advocate for black civil rights and trade unionism. O’Reilly was also a published poet and in great demand as a public orator. O’Reilly’s poems for the O’Connell centenary or on the death of John Mitchell speak to his identity as an Irish nationalist but this was the same man who was called upon to give the inaugural address for the Attucks monument, to memorialise the Pilgrim Fathers and to address the Veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic.

This paper will appraise the several monuments in America, Ireland and Australia which were erected in his memory and consider how his commitment to the Irish cause can be reconciled with his determination to persuade his compatriots to envision their future as American citizens.

Dr Joan Allen is the CNCS Research Director of the Durham Centre for 19^th Century Studies Research and a Visiting Fellow at Newcastle University. Her research encompasses British radicalism, Irish nationalism and the history of the popular press. She is the author of Joseph Cowen and Tyneside Radicalism, 1829-1900 and hasco-edited several works, including two special issues of Labour History Review (2009 and 2013); Histories of Labour: National and International Perspectives (2010); Faith of our Fathers: Popular Culture and Belief in Post-Reformation England, Ireland and Wales (2009), and Papers for the People: A Study of the Chartist Press (2005). Her most recent work ‘The Nineteenth Century Denominational Press’ will appear in The Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press (VOL II:1800-1900). Dr Allen is the Chair of the Society for the Study of Labour History and Secretary of the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland.