1995 marks the 150th anniversary of the first appearance of a new and deadly strain of potato blight in Ireland; a blight that reappeared in varying degrees over the next six years. As a consequence of the resultant food shortage and the more general disruption to economic life, by 1852 at least one million Irish … Read more
When Jonathan Swift died 250 years ago, his publisher George Faulkner eulogised him as ‘a great and eminent Patriot’, whose ‘Genius, Works, Learning and Charity’ evoked universal admiration (Dublin Journal 19-22 October 1745). The sequence of Faulkner’s phrasing deserves notice, since even as Swift’s ‘Genius, Works [and] Learning’, represented by A Tale of a Tub, … Read more
In every sixteenth century campaign in Ireland as elsewhere disease was a greater killer than battle wounds. Field hospitals and army surgeons tried to cope with both. For English survivors welfare measures were often taken back home on their return but efforts to rehabilitate the sick and wounded were also made in Ireland. However, information … Read more
Trinity College Library, Dublin, yesterday acquired the first book printed in Irish. This book, Abidil gaoidheilge & caiticiosma (ABC &catechism), printed in 1571, is only the sixth item known to have beenprinted in Ireland and was purchased for £48,000. Only four copies ofthe book are recorded and that purchased by TCD was the only one … Read more
Yale Center for British Art, Pennsylvania State University and theSpenser Society of America will host an interdisciplinary symposium onThe Faerie Queene in the World, 1596-1996 on 27-28 September 1996. Theorganisers welcome papers on Spenser’s works and life, on violence andrebellion, on Reformation theology, on visual history and iconology, onthe history of political thought, on the … Read more