Phelan,Jim — Lifer

Peter Davies This is a Good Copy of this hardcover Book in Publisher's green cloth with dulled gilt title lettering to spine.No Dust-Jacket.There is some wrinkling to cloth at head of spine and with general rubbing to corners and extremities of the boards. The binding is firm with NO hinge weakness.There are some notes in pencil to the final blank endpaper (could be erased) An early Phelan title. In January 1922, two days after the establishment of the Irish Free State, Phelan, along with 200 others led by Liam O'flaherty seized the Rotunda Concert Hall (the building was later separated from the Rotunda Hospital and is now divided between the Ambassador Cinema and the Gate Theatre) in Dublin and held it for four days, in protest at "the apathy of the authorities". Free State troops forced their surrender.In the period of the Civil War Phelan took part in a post office robbery in Liverpool during which a killing took place; although the judge agreed that Phelan did not commit the act, he was legally culpable simply by virtue of having been involved and present at the robbery. He was sentenced to death by hanging and sent to a prison in Manchester On the eve of his execution in 1924, the sentence weas commuted to life imprisonment. He remained in prison for another 13 years before he was released.Upon on his release from prison in 1937, Phelan vowed never to live within four walls again and returned to the tramp life. Like most tramps, he had a preferred route; in his case, the northbound A1 in England. On this road, as it snaked its way from London to the York and back, he learnt the lore of the road from characters such as Lumpy Red Fox, Dicky Tom Cosgrove, Jimmy Scotland, Stan the Man and Stornoway Slim. He perfected the art of story telling - a line of guff - to ensure that the passerby or house holder would be as generous as possible. He would write his novels and essays in longhand and send the manuscript off to his publisher from the first post office he encountered as he commenced his day's "work". 8vo 355pp First Edition [1938] Good No Jacket First Edition 1st Printing London 8vo