A well-known champion of tenant farmers’ rights and land reform, Andrew J. Kettle (1833–1916) was a co-founder of the Land League with Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell, an advocate of Irish Home Rule, a progressive farmer, and a prolific writer of letters to the editor of The Freeman’s Journal. The Material for Victory is a remarkable document of closely observed, political microhistory recounting Kettle’s involvement in and observations about events leading up to and during the Land War of 1879–1882 and the decade that followed. The memoirs were edited by his son Laurence J. Kettle (1878-1960) and published for the first time in 1958 by C. J. Fallon. This new edition is presented with a new introduction and an additional biographical essay by Niamh Reilly, Established Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Galway, along with comprehensive annotations by Reilly and Dr. Jane O’Brien (Discipline of History), and a Foreword by Michael D. Higgins, Uachtarán na hÉireann.
