While still at Trinity he was made by James Stephens (qv) the centre of a Fenian circle started by his elder brother, John, of some eighty to a hundred students. But these occupations could not hold him long he was adventurous, impetuous, and versatile, and he never graduated. He had a keen interest in heraldry and was for a time aide to Sir Bernard Burke (qv), Ulster king-at-arms.
Their father died in 1861, leaving the family penniless and the boys under the guardianship of Sir Thomas Larcom (qv), under-secretary for Ireland it was common rumour in Dublin that Larcom had to keep intervening to have the young O'Donovans released from prison.Įdmund attended the Royal College of Surgeons, St Stephen's Green, before studying medicine at TCD, where he gained prizes in chemistry, and (thanks to early training in transcribing old manuscripts) was appointed clerk to the registrar. The Fenian Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa (qv) was a frequent visitor to the family home in Upper Buckingham St., and he was later to reproach himself that it was his early acquaintance with these boys that ‘disturbed the serenity of their lives’ ( Recollections, 240), for the four eldest took the IRB oath and the first three had restless lives ending in early death. All the boys were clever, particularly at science and languages, but they were uneven scholars: of four who began studying medicine, three failed to graduate. The O'Donovans lived in relative poverty but the education of the boys was of prime importance to their father, who first taught them himself at home and then sent them to the O'Connell CBS and to Belvedere College. (1844–83), journalist, soldier, and Fenian, was born 13 September 1844 in Dublin, second among six sons (surviving infancy) of the celebrated Celticist and antiquarian John O'Donovan (qv) and Mary Anne O'Donovan (née Broughton), sister-in-law of Eugene O'Curry (qv).
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