Joseph Brenan

Joseph Brenan (17 November 1828 – 27 May 1857) was a poet, journalist and author. A leading member of the Young Irelanders and Irish Confederation.

Early life

Joseph Brenan, was born in Cork on 17 November 1828. Brenan began to write verse at an early age, and was one of the genuine poets of the Young Ireland movement. His earlier poems were published under the initials "J. B., Cork," or "J. B—n," and some of his American verses under the pseudonym "Gondalez." He was also an able prose writer.

Brenan was an active member of the Cork Historical Society, and was one of the editors of the Cork Magazine, which appeared in November 1847, and continued to appear until the end of 1848, when the journal then ceased publication. Some of its contributors, who included Frazer, Martin MacDermott, Fitzjames O'Brien, Mulchinock and Mary Savage, would later either end up in jail or in exile.

1848 Rising

In January 1848, John Mitchel visited Cork and, according to Michael Cavanagh, who would publish a sketch of his Brenan's life in Young Ireland, Dublin, in June and July 1885, Brenan for the first time "beheld the man he most admired on earth, and with whose future destiny, whether for weal or woe, he felt his own was bound up. Never had the arch-enemy of England a more faithful or earnest follower."