`Simply a great work of reference. Future scholars will wonder how anybody managed without the Wellesley Index. It will quietly change the whole nature of Victorian studies.' Christopher Ricks, New Statesman `It is now impossible to think of Victorian literary and historical studies without the benefit of it ... this is a very remarkable achievement indeed ... the complete set will be a monument to the Houghtons foresight, pertinacity and skill.' TLS

Marking Roy Foster's retirement from the Carroll Professorship of Irish history at the University of Oxford, and recognising his extraordinary career as a historian, literary critic, and public intellectual, this essay collection charts Foster's career while reflecting on developments in the field of Irish history writing, teaching, and research.

Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891) wrote remarkably little about himself, but he has attracted the attention of many writers, politicians, and scholars, both during his lifetime and ever since. His controversial and provocative role in Irish and British affairs had him vilified as a murderer in The Times, and afterwards dramatically vindicated by the Westminster Parliament. It cast him as a romantic hero to the young James Joyce, and a self-serving opportunist to the journalists of the Nation. Parnell has been the subject of court cases, parliamentary enquiries and debates, journalism, plays, poems, literary analysis and historical studies. For the first time all these have been collected, catalogued and cross-referenced in one volume, an invaluable resource for scholars of late nineteenth century Ireland and Britain. Divided into fifteen chapters, including a biographical sketch, the volume contains information on manuscript and archival collections, printed primary sources, Parnell's writing, Parnell's speeches in the House of Commons and outside Parliament, contemporary journalism, contemporary writing, and contemporary illustrations on Irish affairs, and a substantial list of scholarly work, including biographies, books, articles, chapters, and theses. This volume offers readers a clear record of the substantial material already available on Parnell, and in doing so offers resources to future research in this area.