It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Fred Donnelly on 1 November 2014.We had seen him only two months previously in Glastonbury for the Albion tenth anniversary party, and his death comes as a tremendous shock.
Fred, from Montreal, earned his PhD in social history from the University of Sheffield in 1975, and then taught at the University of New Brunswick for decades.He never forgot his time in Sheffield, and many of his published articles focused on local history.He joined Albion in 2007 and over the years produced an extraordinary amount of work for us, some of which has been frequently cited --notably his piece on the idea of the moral economy, and his pioneering research on the Yorkshire Rebellion of 1820, which drew significant interest from other historians as well as genealogists.
Fred had wide-ranging interests, a seemingly limitless supply of energy, and a gift for communicating his passion for English working-class history to others.He was a prolific writer, not only of material for Albion, but also for numerous Canadian newspapers. On that cloudless weekend in Glastonbury, he threw himself into all the scheduled events with great enthusiasm, and wished us all to note that, as the oldest member of the team, he had succeeded in reaching the top of the Tor first. He had retired from lecturing in 2012, and was relishing the opportunity that this gave him to travel and write. This edition was to have contained two of his book reviews (of a recent historical work entitled The Men Who Lost America, and the nineteenth-century Veil of Isis, Or Mysteries of the Druids.)
Fred was not only an excellent writer, but a good friend.We will miss him very much, and we all join in sending our condolences to his family
A selection of Fred's Albion writings can be accessed below.
