Do penance or perish: Magdalen asylums in Ireland Frances Finnegan (Oxford University Press, £12.50) ISBN 0195174607Over the past number of years, prompted primarily by a number of television documentaries and films, the purpose and objective of Magdalen asylums in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ireland have had a considerable airing. However, much of this debate generated more … Read more
Strange kin: Ireland and the American South Kieran Quinlan (Louisiana State University Press, $49.95) ISBN 0807129836 The burden of history shared by pure Irish immigrants within the American South and its mixture of so-called ‘Celts’, ‘Anglo-Saxons’ and ‘Scotch Irish’ is not just stereotypically born of those ethnic groups’ ‘stupidity’ but by an obvious lack of … Read more
Refiguring Ireland: essays in honour of L.M. Cullen David Dickson and Cormac Ó Gráda (eds) (Lilliput Press, €60) ISBN 1901866 84X It is said that you can judge a man by the company he keeps. It certainly applies in the case of this volume of essays published to honour the work of Louis Cullen, one … Read more
Mary Cullen and Maria Luddy (eds) (Woodfield Press, €18.50) ISBN 095342930X Since the 1980s, historians of women in Ireland have focused largely on the early years of the twentieth century and the apparent bitter split between first-wave feminists who fought for the vote and nationalists who concentrated their efforts on the fight for Irish independence. … Read more
Nicholas Allen (Four Courts Press, E45) ISBN 18518269 George Russell (Æ) is an elusive figure. He is acknowledged as one of the great names of the Irish Literary Revival, but scholars have found it hard to recapture his contemporary impact. Russell is remembered primarily as the ‘saint’ who failed to develop artistically, who through his … Read more