“The Murder Machine."

Padraic Pearse

“The Murder Machine."

Dublin

Bodenstown Series No. 3

1916

Pearse writes in his introduction that “This pamphlet is not, as its name might seem to import, a penny dreadful, at least in the ordinary sense. It consists of a series of studies of the English education system in Ireland.” The title article was originally published in the Irish Review in February 1913. Pearse’s general theme is that in the school system imposed by the British “There are no ideas there, no love of beauty, no love of books, no love of knowledge, no heroic inspiration.” In a subsequent essay in the pamphlet he writes, “The English thing that is called education in Ireland is founded on a denial of the Irish nation.”

Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations