First published over forty years ago and now updated to cover the “Celtic Tiger” economic boom of the 2000s and subsequent worldwide recession, this new edition of a perennial bestseller interprets Irish history as a whole. Designed and written to be popular and authoritative, critical and balanced, it has been a core text in both Irish and American universities for decades. It has also proven to be an extremely popular book for casual readers with an interest in history and Irish affairs. Considered the definitive history among the Irish themselves, it is an essential text for anyone interested in the history of Ireland.

This major new study presents a political and cultural history of some of Ireland's key national theatre projects from the 1890s to the 1990s. Impressively wide-ranging in coverage, Theatre and the State in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Cultivating the People includes discussions on: *the politics of the Irish literary movement at the Abbey Theatre before and after political independence; *the role of a state-sponsored theatre for the post-1922 unionist government in Northern Ireland; *the convulsive effects of the Northern Ireland conflict on Irish theatre. Lionel Pilkington draws on a combination of archival research and critical readings of individual plays, covering works by J. M. Synge, Sean O'Casey, Lennox Robinson, T. C. Murray, George Shiels, Brian Friel, and Frank McGuinness. In its insistence on the details of history, this is a book important to anyone interested in Irish culture and politics in the twentieth century.

Dermot Meleady's authoritative second part of his full-length biography of John Redmond, the first to be published in 80 years, begins in 1901 shortly after his election as chairman of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the Westminster Parliament, and ends with his death in 1918. The book details Redmond's reconstruction of the Party following its reunification after the destructive decade-long Parnell split, and his refashioning of it as a political weapon for winning Irish Home Rule. It follows his role in successfully passing the Conservatives 1903 Land Purchase Act which greatly accelerated the transfer of land ownership from Irish landlords to Irish farmers. His successes and failures in the years of the 1906 10 Liberal Government are also fully documented, but when the Liberals move in 1911 to remove the House of Lords veto, the stage is set for the passage of the third Home Rule Bill, the paramount goal of Redmond s endeavours. The events of the following turbulent five years the increasingly militant resistance of Ulster Unionism to Home Rule, the outbreak of the Great War and the unforeseen Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 as much a blow against Home Rule as against British rule cast him down from triumphant prime-minister-in waiting to the status of Ireland s lost leader. Through exhaustive research in Redmond's personal papers, Dermot Meleady has produced the definitive story of one of the most tragic figures in twentieth-century Irish political history.

This book explores the political and ideological developments that resulted in the establishment of two separate states on the island of Ireland: the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. It examines how this radical transformation took place, including how British Liberals and Unionists were as influential in the “two-state solution” as any Irish party. The book analyzes transformative events including the third home rule crisis, partition and the creation of Northern Ireland, and the Irish Free State’s establishment through the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The policies and priorities of major figures such as H.H. Asquith, David Lloyd George, John Redmond, Eamon de Valera, Edward Carson, and James Craig receive prominent attention, as do lesser-known events and organizations like the Irish Convention and Irish Dominion League. The work outlines many possible solutions to Britain’s “Irish question,” and discusses why some settlement ideas were adopted and others discarded. Analyzing public discourse and archival sources, this monograph offers new perspectives on the Irish Revolution, highlighting in particular the tension between public rhetoric and private opinion.

Using a transnational approach, this volume surveys the origins of Irish terrorism and its impact on the Anglo-Saxon community during an era of intense imperialism. While at times it posed sharp disagreements between Britain and the United States, their ideological repulsion to terrorism later led to cooperation in counter-terrorism strategies.

What is it like to be in the I.R.A. - or at their mercy? This fascinating study explores the lives and deaths of the enemies and victims of the County Cork I.R.A. between 1916 and 1923 - the most powerful and deadly branch of the I.R.A. during one of the most turbulent periods in twentieth-century Ireland. These years saw the breakdown of the British legal system and police authority, the rise of republican violence, and the escalation of the conflict into a full-scale guerilla war, leading to a wave of riots, ambushes, lootings, and reprisal killings, with civilians forming the majority of victims in this unacknowledged civil war. Religion may have provided the starting point for the conflict, but class prejudice, patriotism, and personal grudges all fuelled the development and continuation of widespread violence. Using an unprecedented range of sources - many of them only recently made public - Peter Hart explores the motivation behind such activity. His conclusions not only reveal a hidden episode of Ireland's troubled past but provide valuable insights into the operation of similar terrorist groups today.

This collection shows the depth and range of James Joyce's relationship with key literary, intellectual and cultural issues that arose in the nineteenth century. Thirteen original essays explore several new themes in Joyce studies, connecting Joyce's writing to that of his predecessors, and linking Joyce's formal innovations to his reading of, and immersion in, nineteenth-century life. The volume begins by addressing Joyce's relationships with fictional forms in nineteenth-century and turn-of-the-century Ireland. Further sections explore the rise of new economies of consumption and Joyce's formal adaptations of major intellectual figures and issues. What emerges is a portrait of Joyce as he has not previously been seen, giving scholars and students of fin-de-siècle culture, literary modernism and English and Irish literature fresh insight into one of the most important writers of the past century.

"This study provides the first comprehensive historical account of Joyce's writings 1898-1915 in the context both of the distinct phases and shifting currents of British-Irish history during the period, and the sometimes rather different phases important in the works"--From jacket.

Finalist, American Conference for Irish Studies James S. Donnelly, Sr., Prize for Books on History and Social Sciences Abject Loyalty challenges the view that Irish nationalists were necessarily hostile to the British monarchy. During Queen Victoria's reign, royal visits to Ireland were in fact generally met with great enthusiasm. Indeed, the strength of the opposition of some Irish nationalists to the monarchy was a sign of the purchase that it seemed to have on the allegiance of many people within nationalist Ireland. By the 1880s, however, the monarchy had become the focus for British imperial identity in England and for the denial of constitutional legitimacy to those in Ireland who wished for home rule. It began to face increasing opposition in Ireland both because nationalist politicians feared its influence might reconcile Irish people to the Union with Britain and because enthusiasm for monarchy in Ireland was used to feed a British discourse which saw Ireland as a country that could be appeased by concessions short of home rule and which did not take nationalist demands seriously. The book traces Ireland's interaction with the British monarchy from King George III to Queen Elizabeth II but focuses on the reign of Queen Victoria. It deals with its topic on two levels. It explores Queen Victoria's interaction with Ireland and her influence on British policy towards Ireland. And it examines how Queen Victoria and monarchy were perceived in Ireland. Whereas Queen Victoria's views and actions have previously been subject to historical analysis, no previous study has seriously explored how she was perceived in Ireland or the subtleties of nationalism's attitude towards monarchy. Abject Loyalty makes a significant and original contribution to the political and cultural history of Ireland and will be of interest to those concerned with understanding the historical development of Irish identity. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: James H. Murphy is professor of English at All Hallows College in Dublin and the author or editor of numerous works, including Catholic Fiction and Social Reality in Ireland, 1873-1922, and Gender Perspectives in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (coedited with Margaret Kelleher). PRAISE FOR THE BOOK: "Murphy's book is a comparative rarity--a book that genuinely explores a fresh theme and does so in an entirely original fashion. . . . His analysis changes the context for interpreting the nationalist movement in Ireland and is a must for anyone interested in the Irish during this vital era."--Prof. Alan O'Day, Mansfield College, Oxford "Well-written and provocative. . . A creative, well-written, and significant book that undoubtedly will take a deserved place within the vast historiography of nineteenth-century Ireland. More than that, it is essential reading for any scholar interested in the evolution of Irish nationalism or Anglo-Irish high politics in the Victorian age."--American Historical Review "By bridging the gulf between Anglo-Irish politics and culture, Abject Loyalty provides a fresh take on the history of nineteenth-century Anglo-Irish relations, and Murphy deftly brings to light an aspect of Irish culture that provide to be equally difficult for both nationalists and pro-Union politicians to appropriate."--History "[A] clearly-written and worthwhile study."--Frank A. Biletz, Loyola University Chicago, Albion