Letters to James Pearse from Annie Besant, Freethought Publishing Company, 63 Fleet Street, and Oatlands, Mortimer Road, St. John’s Wood, London. The letters refer to Pearse’s efforts to have his article published by the Freethought Publishing Company. Many of the letters relate to Pearse’s account with the publishing company and to progress of sales of the publication. Besant’s letter of 29 January 1883 states that Pearse can dedicate his article to Charles Bradlaugh. The letter (13 March 1883) reads ‘I send you the MS of “Heaven”, the printer having found it after considerable trouble. The other MS has disappeared in the bottomless pit of used copy’. Other letters suggest the titles of Pearse’s work are ‘Thoughts or Heaven’ and ‘House of Commons’. In a letter from Pearse to Besant (25 May 1884), he expresses his wish to use the word ‘Humanitas’ rather than his name in any published report. A letter (4 October 1884) from Besant reads ‘your pamphlet, issued anonymously would not sell in large numbers, and you would certainly lose. Further, Socialism is not a selling subject. Even Mr. Bradlaugh’s pamphlet against [it] … have not sold so largely as the other issues of the same series by the same writers’.
Copy writ of summons to the High Court of Justice (King’s Bench) in the case of Thomas Ward (plaintiff) and Margaret Pearse ‘trading as Pearse & Sons’, 27 Great Brunswick Street, Dublin.
Copy requisitions on title to premises on the west side of Cullenswood Avenue in Ranelagh, Dublin, from George Patterson to Patrick Pearse. The requisitions were compiled by French & French, solicitors, St. Stephen’s Green North, Dublin, for W.A. McMullen, solicitor for the purchaser (Pearse), 3 South Frederick Street, Dublin.
Copy letter to [Patrick Pearse] from Seumas MacManus, Plainfield, New Jersey, re a meeting. MacManus also affirms that he has sent a letter to the ‘Gaelic American’ about Pearse’s ‘mission’.
Copy letter to Margaret Mary Pearse from Donadlo Stewart, Casillia 201, Bolivia, seeking information on the progress of the collection in aid of the fund for the purchase of St. Enda’s School.
Copy letter from James Pearse to Charles Bradlaugh. The letter reads ‘The fact is I am extremely disgusted with what I read in this morning’s papers, especially the action of the ungrateful Irish Party’.
Copy letter from James Pearse to Charles Bradlaugh. The letter reads ‘I am placed in a very paradoxical position – an image maker by profession and an image breaker by inclination’. He adds ‘I have been dangling – to use a scriptural phrase – between Hell and Heaven for the last twenty five years of my life: only that I reverse the meaning of the words: - everything appertaining to ecclesiasticism I regard as the former; and to be free of which, I regard as the latter’.
Copy letter from James Pearse to Charles Bradlaugh. The letter reads ‘I have written a letter to the “Agnostic Journal” upon [the] same subject (agnosticism and atheism) principally because my name was mentioned therein’.
