“Though Not an Irishman”

Abstract

. One of the most important elements to the rise of Henry George to international prominence in the 1880s was his‐successful cultivation of a large Irish‐American following. This was no small accomplishment, given the fact that George was not Irish Catholic, but rather English‐American Protestant. Nonetheless, through his early interest in Ireland's troubles, marriage to Irish Catholic Annie McCloskey Fox, friendship with Patrick Ford and Michael Davitt, activism in the Irish Land League, travels through Ireland during the Land War as a correspondent for the Irish World, and linking the struggle of Irish peasants against economic injustice to a similar struggle of American workers, George developed an enormous Irish‐American following. This relationship accounted for much of the early sales of Progress and Poverty and subsequent lecture opportunities, as well as making him known widely throughout the British Isles. The culmination of this phenomenon was George's sensational run for mayor of New York City in 1886.