In 1892 Dr. Everett W. Fish published the first biography of Ignatius Donnelly. It was titled "Donnelliana." It has since been superseded by the late Martin Ridge's "Ignatius Donnelly, Portrait of a Politician" (University of Chicago Press, 1962).
In "The Political Career of Ignatius Donnelly," 8 Mississippi Valley Historical Review 80, 81 (1921), John D. Hicks wrote, "The book was prepared while Dr. Fish was a devoted friend of Mr. Donnelly, and is laudatory to the last degree, designed for circulation during the campaign of 1892 to offset slanderous statements persistently made against Donnelly by the opposition press. It is not a formal biography, but rather a collection of miscellaneous information about Donnelly, and quotations from his works. Donnelly and Fish soon fell out, and thereafter Donnelly did not entertain a high opinion of the work. 'I do not wonder,' he wrote to a friend, 'that you feel aggrieved at the blunders and misstatements about yourself in Donnelliana. I also am aggrieved at them and other things in his book.' " Donnelly to [H. L.] Gordon, January 10, 1893, in the Gordon papers, in the possession of the Minnesota Historical Society.
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