Literature & Literary Studies
April 2021
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Humanities & Social SciencesMay 2026Irish townspeople
The early modern urban experience, c.1400–c.1640
by Colm Lennon
Through a series of innovative perspectives, this book examines how early modern Irish townspeople experienced the urban world through a range of family and associational ties. Migrants inducted through town citizenship and marriage bonded more closely as sisters or brothers of confraternities and guilds, consolidating parish membership. Civic religion saw the integration of religion with town politics and councils, and monastic charity of the friars' hospitals preceded the era of modern municipal welfare. In circumstances of the alienation of the long-settled Catholic townspeople from the state's religious and political Reformation in the seventeenth century, they drew sustenance from the continuity of institutions such as colleges, fraternities and hospitals and forms of coexistence with Protestant fellow-citizens.
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Biography & True StoriesMarch 2026Eva Gore-Booth: Irish radical poet, rebel and reformer
Anniversary edition
by Sonja Tiernan
An acclaimed biography of poet, pacifist and political firebrand Eva Gore-Booth. The Irish poet and activist Eva Gore-Booth (1870-1926) led a life defiantly at odds with her aristocratic origins. Choosing to live and work among the poor of Manchester, she campaigned on behalf of barmaids, circus performers, flower sellers and pit-brow lasses, her partner, Esther Roper, at her side. Gore-Booth was tireless in her pursuit of justice. She was a militant pacifist during the First World War, a champion of Irish independence and a pioneering thinker on gender and sexuality. She was also a prolific author, publishing nineteen volumes of poetry and prose that reflect the full force of her radical convictions. Featuring a new preface that situates Gore-Booth's life and work in the context of our current political climate, this biography reclaims her place as a significant figure of Anglo-Irish letters and an unsung hero of LGBT+ history.
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Literature & Literary StudiesFebruary 2023Imagining the Irish child
Discourses of childhood in Irish Anglican writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
by Jarlath Killeen
This book examines the ways in which ideas about children, childhood and Ireland changed together in Irish Protestant writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It focuses on different varieties of the child found in the work of a range of Irish Protestant writers, theologians, philosophers, educationalists, politicians and parents from the early seventeenth century up to the outbreak of the 1798 Rebellion. The book is structured around a detailed examination of six 'versions' of the child: the evil child, the vulnerable/innocent child, the political child, the believing child, the enlightened child, and the freakish child. It traces these versions across a wide range of genres (fiction, sermons, political pamphlets, letters, educational treatises, histories, catechisms and children's bibles), showing how concepts of childhood related to debates about Irish nationality, politics and history across these two centuries.
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Humanities & Social SciencesApril 2026Converting Ireland
Religious education, language and colonialism
by Karina Bénazech Wendling
Karina Bénazech Wendling offers a re-assessment of 'souperism'-the long-debated claim that food was used to convert Irish Catholics to Protestantism during the Great Famine. Focusing on the Irish Society for Promoting the Education of the Native Irish through their Own Language, the first group labeled 'soupers' in 1841, she uncovers a more complex picture. Rather than a mere tool of British cultural imperialism, the Society had a deep engagement with the Irish language and Bible translation, while also encouraging religious conversions in the West. The book explores the Society's role in Ireland's religious and political landscape, the rise of Catholic counter-missions, and nationalist resistance. Offering fresh insights into Ireland's religious history and global missionary movements, this book is essential for scholars of Irish studies, interdenominational relations, and education in Ireland.
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Humanities & Social SciencesFebruary 2017Scottishness and Irishness in New Zealand since 1840
by Angela McCarthy, Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie
This book examines the distinctive aspects that insiders and outsiders perceived as characteristic of Irish and Scottish ethnic identities in New Zealand. When, how, and why did Irish and Scots identify themselves and others in ethnic terms? What characteristics did the Irish and the Scots attribute to themselves and what traits did others assign to them? Did these traits change over time and if so how? Contemporary interest surrounding issues of ethnic identities is vibrant. In countries such as New Zealand, descendants of European settlers are seeking their ethnic origins, spurred on in part by factors such as an ongoing interest in indigenous genealogies, the burgeoning appeal of family history societies, and the booming financial benefits of marketing ethnicities abroad. This fascinating book will appeal to scholars and students of the history of empire and the construction of identity in settler communities, as well as those interested in the history of New Zealand.
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Literature & Literary StudiesMay 2026Translating hell
Vernacular theology and apocrypha in the medieval North Sea
by Stephen C. E. Hopkins
In the Middle Ages, hell was useful because it was vaguely defined. Canonical scriptures scarcely mention hell, leaving much to the imaginations of early Christians, who used it to sort out who belonged within the faith. This book explores how hell became a place for literary experiments with local challenges in theology and identity. Following the reception and transformations of two popular hell apocrypha, it argues that they served as this role because of their liminal textual authority. As noncanonical scriptures, apocrypha afforded medieval writers space to revise their hells (since they were not actually scripture), while also encouraging readers to revere those experiments as valid (since they seemed like scripture). The book brings together adaptations from early medieval England, Iceland, Ireland, and Wales, placing the early vernacular theologies of the North Sea in comparative conversation.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJanuary 2017The West must wait
County Galway and the Irish Free State, 1922–32
by Una Newell
The West must wait presents a new perspective on the development of the Irish Free State. It extends the regional historical debate beyond the Irish revolution and raises a series of challenging questions about post-civil war society in Ireland. Through a detailed examination of key local themes - land, poverty, politics, emigration, the status of the Irish language, the influence of radical republicans and the authority of the Catholic Church - it offers a probing analysis of the socio-political realities of life in the new state. This book opens up a new dimension by providing a rural contrast to the Dublin-centred views of Irish politics. Significantly, it reveals the level of deprivation in local Free State society with which the government had to confront in the west. Rigorously researched, it explores the disconnect between the perceptions of what independence would deliver and what was achieved by the incumbent Cumann na nGaedheal administration.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJanuary 2023Democracy and dissent in the Irish Free State
by Jason Knirck
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Humanities & Social SciencesAugust 2022The Irish parliament, 1613–89
The evolution of a colonial institution
by Coleman A. Dennehy
The Irish parliament was both the scene of frequent political battles and an important administrative and legal element of the state machinery of early modern Ireland. This institutional study looks at how parliament dispatched its business on a day-to-day basis. It takes in major areas of responsibility such as creating law, delivering justice, conversing with the executive and administering parliamentary privilege. Its ultimate aim is to present the Irish parliament as one of many such representative assemblies emerging from the feudal state and into the modern world, with a changing set of responsibilities that would inevitably transform the institution and how it saw both itself and the other political assemblies of the day.
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Humanities & Social SciencesApril 2021The Irish tower house
Society, economy and environment, c. 1300–1650
by Victoria L. McAlister
The Irish tower house examines the social role of castles in late-medieval and early modern Ireland. It uses a multidisciplinary methodology to uncover the lived experience of this historic culture, demonstrating the interconnectedness of society, economics and the environment. Of particular interest is the revelation of how concerned pre-modern people were with participation in the economy and the exploitation of the natural environment for economic gain. Material culture can shed light on how individuals shaped spaces around themselves, and tower houses, thanks to their pervasiveness in medieval and modern landscapes, represent a unique resource. Castles are the definitive building of the European Middle Ages, meaning that this book will be of great interest to scholars of both history and archaeology.
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Literature & Literary StudiesMarch 2009Irish Literature Since 1990
by Michael Parker, Scott Brewster
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Teaching, Language & ReferenceMay 2025US diplomacy and the Good Friday Agreement in post-conflict Northern Ireland
by Richard Hargy
Richard Haass and Mitchell Reiss, as autonomous diplomats in the George W. Bush State Department, were able to alter US intervention in Northern Ireland and play critical roles in the post-1998 peace process. Their contributions have not been fully appreciated or understood. The restoration of Northern Ireland's power-sharing government in 2007 was made possible by State Department-led intervention in the peace process. There are few references to Northern Ireland in work examining the foreign policy legacy of the George W. Bush presidency. Moreover, the ability to control US foreign policy towards the region brought one of George W. Bush's Northern Ireland special envoys into direct diplomatic conflict with the most senior actors inside the British government. This book will uncover the extent of this fall-out and provide original accounts on how diplomatic relations between these old allies became so fraught.
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Humanities & Social SciencesOctober 2018
The Irish in Manchester c.1750–1921
Resistance, adaptation and identity
by Mervyn Busteed
This book examines the development of the Irish community in Manchester, one of the most dynamic cities of nineteenth-century Britain. Based on research into a wide variety of local sources, it examines the process by which the Irish came to be blamed for all the ills of the Industrial Revolution and the ways in which they attempted to cope with a sometimes actively hostile environment. It discusses the nature and degree of residential segregation in one notable Irish district and the role of the Catholic Church as a source of spiritual comfort and the base for a dense network of mutual aid and social and cultural organisations. It also examines how the Irish community allied itself with local campaign groups and political parties and organised celebrations and processions that simultaneously expressed its evolving sense of Irishness but fitted in with local traditions and customs.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJanuary 2019The post-crisis Irish voter
Voting behaviour in the Irish 2016 general election
by Michael Marsh, David M. Farrell, Theresa Reidy
This is the definitive study of the Irish general election of 2016 - the most dramatic election in a generation, which resulted in the worst electoral outcome for Ireland's established parties, the most fractionalized party system in the history of the state, and the emergence of new parties and groups. These outcomes follow a pattern seen across a number of Western Europe's established democracies in which the 'deep crisis' of the Great Recession has wreaked havoc on party systems. The objective of this book is to assess this most extraordinary of Irish elections both in its Irish and wider cross-national context. With contributions from leading scholars on Irish elections, and using a unique dataset - the Irish National Election Study 2016 - this volume explores voting patterns at Ireland's first post crisis election and it considers the implications for the electoral landscape and politics in Ireland.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJune 2021Na Fianna Éireann and the Irish Revolution, 1909–23
by Marnie Hay
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Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2017
'An Irish empire'?
Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire
by Sally Visick
This volume, which explores aspects of the experience of Ireland and Irish people within the British Empire, addresses a central concern of modern Irish scholarship. Much academic writing about Ireland, its history and culture is dominated by the vocabulary of imperialism. Engels described Ireland as England's first colony. Contemporary observers frequently characterise it as having a post-colonial society. Ireland, on the other hand, was also part of the metropolitan core of the Empire and supplied many of its soldiers, settlers and administrators. The paradox that Ireland was both 'imperial' and 'colonial' lies at the heart of this book which includes studies of Irish service in the Empire as well as the impact of imperial concerns in Ireland. Concentrating on the period since the mid-nineteenth century, the scope of the volume is impressively broad. Popular culture, sport and film are investigated, as well as business history and the military and political 'sinews of Empire'. The book will be of particular value to institutions teaching Irish and British history to degree level and the growing number of Irish studies courses being offered in Great Britain and North America.
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Political science & theoryJuly 2015The political theory of the Irish Constitution
Republicanism and the basic law
by Eoin Daly, Tom Hickey
The political theory of the Irish Constitution considers Irish constitutional law and the Irish constitutional tradition from the perspective of Republican theory. It analyses the central devices and doctrines of the Irish Constitution - popular sovereignty, constitutional rights and judicial review - in light of Republican concepts of citizenship and civic virtue. The Constitution, it will argue, can be understood as a framework for promoting popular participation in government as much as a mechanism for protecting individual liberties. It will be of interest to students and researchers in Irish politics, political theory and constitutional law, and to all those interested in political reform and public philosophy in Ireland.
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Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2008The Irish voter
The nature of electoral competition in the Republic of Ireland
by Michael Marsh, Richard Sinnott, John Garry, Fiachra Kennedy
This pioneering analysis uses the results from the first ever Irish election study to provide a comprehensive survey of the motives, outlook and behaviour of voters in the Republic of Ireland. Building on the foundations laid down by previous work on comparative electoral behaviour, it explores long-term influences on vote choice, such as party loyalties and enduring values, as well as short-term ones, such as the economy, the party leaders and the candidates themselves. It also examines how people use their vote and why so many people do not vote at all. Many features of Irish elections make such a detailed study particularly important. The single transferable vote system allows voters an unusual degree of freedom to pick the candidates they prefer, while electoral trends observed elsewhere can be found in a more extreme form in Ireland. For example, attachment to parties is very low, differences between them are often obscure, candidate profiles are very high and turnout is falling rapidly. However, Irish elections defy international trends in other respects, most notably in the degree of personal contact parties and candidates make with their voters. Findings are presented in a manner that is highly accessible to anyone with an interest in elections, electoral systems and electoral behaviour. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in Irish politics and is an important text for students of European Politics, Parties and Elections, Comparative Politics and Political Sociology. ;
