Devoy, John [key], 1842–1928, Irish-American journalist and Irish revolutionary, b. Ireland. He joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood (see Fenian movement) in 1861. For proselytizing within the British army he was sentenced in 1866 tp 15 years in prison. He was released in 1871, however, and went to America. He founded (1881) and edited the Irish Nation, and became one of the leading Irish propagandists in the United States. He organized the rescue of six Irish prisoners from Freemantle, Australia, using the Catalpa in 1875–76, and secured American financial support for the Land League movement. In 1903 he founded the Gaelic-American. During World War I he secured much of the financial backing for the Easter Rebellion (1916). Afterward he back the Irish Free State against the republican extremists and helped secure a market for its first bonds.
See his Recollections of an Irish Rebel (1929); biographies by, T. Golway (1998) and T. Dooley (2003); D. Ryan, The Phoenix Flame (1937).
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