H. Gustav Klaus (ed.) (O’Brien Press, £15.99) This is several books rolled into one—biography, letters, poems, plays, and essays, the whole project ‘illustrated with historic photographs, documents and ephemera’. The title suggests a simplistic approach belied by the contents. This is a book that will enchant, inform, anger and frustrate, as much as the events … Read more
Jeremy Williams (Irish Academic Press, £35) In his foreword to this book Mark Girouard recalls schoolboy holidays in Ireland and a youthful appreciation of Irish nineteenth-century classicism gained through the seat of his trousers on sliding down the staircase balustrade of an aunt’s Greek-revival house. Jeremy Williams A Companion Guide to Architecture in Ireland, 1837-1921 … Read more
Landlords and tenants in mid-Victorian Ireland W.E. Vaughan (Clarendon Press, £40) This scholarly work is the result of long, methodical research based on an impressive range of primary sources, most notably estate papers. It is delivered free from irritating jargon with the econometric analysis lightened by a varied array of anecdotal backup. Vaughan questions conventional … Read more
Aristocrats Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox 1740-1832 Stella Tillyard (Chatto and Windus, £20) Aristocrats is a tour de force. Stella Tillyard has used the stories of the four sisters of its subtitle, largely taken from their copious correspondence, to immerse the reader in the eighteenth century on both sides of the Irish Sea. The … Read more
The Chief Governors: the rise and fall of reform government in Tudor Ireland, 1536-1588 Ciaran Brady (Cambridge University Press, £35) Anglicising the government of Ireland: the Irish privy council and the expansion of Tudor rule, 1556-78 Jon Crawford (Irish Academic Press, £37.50) Sixteenth-century Ireland: the incomplete conquest Colm Lennon (Gill & MacMillan, £14.99) Brady’s Chief … Read more