The perfect collection for any institution with courses on Irish history, literature, humanity, politics and religion. Written by esteemed professors and researchers, these works provide insightful perspectives on Ireland’s complex past and present.
The collection covers key themes such as the intersections of politics and religion and the unique dynamics of Northern Ireland, off ering valuable insights into the multifaceted dimensions of Irish identity and society.
| Key series |
| Irish Society |
| Studies in Early Modern Irish History |
| Collection year | Titles |
| 2025 titles | 6 |
| 2023/4 titles | 5 |
| 2003-2022 titles | 129 |
| Total collection | 143 |
| Themes |
| Migration |
| Terrorism |
| Conflict |
| Peace |
| Politics |
| Religion |
| Economy |
| Inequality |
| Culture |
| History |
| Gender |
| Diplomacy |
| Subjects |
| Colonialism and imperialism |
| Comparative politics |
| Cultural Studies |
| European History |
| History and Archaeology |
| International relations |
| Literary Studies: c1600 to c1800 |
| Migration, immigration and emigration |
| Peace studies and confllict resolution |
| Political Science and theory |
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Irish Studies collection
When Seán Mac Stiofáin and his supporters walked out of the Irish Republican Army convention in 1969 and formed the Provisional Army Council, the path that Sinn Féin would follow seemed already mapped out: the divisions that were tearing the army apart were inevitably reflected within the party. Abstentionism was the means of identification of Republicans to their ideology. It became the depository of a number of aspirations, the catalyst of discontent for those who decided to remain faithful to principles and refused any attempted change. The issue of abstentionism revealed a flaw in the party's ideological and strategic make-up: that of its composite nature. Against all odds, whether favourable or unfavourable, Sinn Féin continues to demand the end of partition, disregarding the circumstances and the desirability of such a demand.
Among the many battles that Sinn Féin had to face in order to ensure its own survival, possibly one of the toughest was fought on the financial front. What became known as the Sinn Féin Funds Case thus started during the Second World War and spanned over several years, as the court hearings started in April 1948. The Sinn Féin Funds Bill provoked a heated debate within the Dáil, and the arguments put forward by those who opposed it suggested just how sensitive that chapter of Irish history continued to be. The objective was to establish whether there was continuity between the two pre- and post-Civil War Sinn Féin parties and consequently, whether 1948 Sinn Féin was entitled to the funds. The outcome of the Funds Case was a psychological setback for Sinn Féin, a test of its faith in its own legitimacy and legacy.
To date, only two studies deal with Sinn Féin's history from 1905 to 2005: Brian Feeney's Sinn Féin: A Hundred Turbulent Years (2002) and Kevin Rafter's Sinn Féin 1905–2005: In the Shadow of Gunmen (2005). However, they only dedicate small sections to the era of the fourth Sinn Féin. Nevertheless, Sinn Féin did not disappear altogether from the political scene after 1926. It was undoubtedly overshadowed by more powerful political forces, but although it operated in very restricted circumstances over long periods of time, its final objectives, the end of partition and the establishment of the Republic proclaimed in 1916, always found sufficiently passionate advocates to keep it alive throughout those years. In 1948, during the first convention held since the Second World War, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) decided to resurrect the moribund Sinn Féin, with a limited role, that of assisting the IRA. Sinn Féin therefore became the 'political wing' of the movement. Parallel to these developments, Sinn Féin kept an active role in Northern Ireland, mainly through the Republican Clubs, created in order to circumvent the ban on the party. Sinn Féin's involvement in the Civil Rights movement remains a source of speculation. The history of the fourth Sinn Féin came to an end with the 1970 split between Officials and Provisionals, opening a new page in the fortunes of a party which had substantially morphed during its forty-five years of existence.
Sinn Féin from 1926 becomes a footnote in most history books, which mention its rapid decline from 1926 onwards and its revival in the early 1950s, being eclipsed first and foremost by Fianna Fáil, but also, by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Sinn Féin did not disappear altogether from the political scene after 1926. It was undoubtedly overshadowed by more powerful political forces, but although it operated in very restricted circumstances over long periods of time, its final objectives, the end of partition and the establishment of the Republic proclaimed in 1916, always found sufficiently passionate advocates to keep it alive throughout those years. In 1948, during the first convention held since the Second World War, the IRA decided to resurrect the moribund Sinn Féin, with a limited role, that of assisting the IRA.
The 1930s were characterised among Republicans by the tensions that dominated the relationships between the different groups. Sinn Féin's role and visibility were increasingly limited, and its rigid stance and principles made it a difficult organisation with which to cooperate. The visit of the Prince of Wales for the inauguration of the Northern Ireland parliament buildings in Stormont, on 16 November 1932, provided Sinn Féin with an opportunity to engage more actively with political activism and embark on a campaign that would, for a time, give the party a level of visibility. The competition for the Republican constituency was taking on a new dimension, with Fianna Fáil determined to occupy the front stage and have its legitimacy as the Republican party recognised once and for all. The Second World War was undoubtedly the darkest period ever experienced by the Republican movement.
The rule for any member of Sinn Féin seemed to consist in following, word for word, the ideas and principles which the party had elaborated in its more glorious years, but which evidently had lost currency after 1926. Art O'Connor, who had already stepped down as president of the Second Dáil, was also forced to resign from the party when he announced his intention to practise as a lawyer in the Free State tribunals, in 1927, as such a move was deemed contrary to the principles of the party and represented a betrayal of the Republican tribunals which were still in existence, albeit only virtually. Sinn Féin, cut off from a possible base, refusing any compromise, was fast becoming an elitist organisation which was exclusively concerned with issues of principles and not with the social or economic realities of the country.
1946 was a key year for Republicans. It saw the end of internment without trial, which had been in place throughout the war. The formation of Clann na Poblachta might have prompted the Irish Republican Army into actively seeking to form a political movement. At the end of 1948, the Irish Dáil voted the Republic of Ireland Act, officially granting the twenty-six counties the status of Republic and abolishing the 1936 External Relations Act, which devolved foreign policy to the Irish cabinet, and ending its membership of the Commonwealth. The year 1955 gave Sinn Féin the opportunity to play an active political role. For the Irish Communist Party, the Republican leadership had not sidelined the army, but 'saw its role as defending the gains achieved in the political struggle and in an extreme situation as a role of defence'.
This final chapter takes a close look at the contribution that Woman’s Way and, once they started publishing in the second half of the decade, Young Woman and Woman’s Choice made to the campaign for women’s rights. Woman’s View, being ideologically non-political, is largely absent from this chapter. The editors of the other three magazines, however, sought to engage their readers, challenging them to become active citizens. Exploring coverage of issues such as working wives, equal pay and access to contraception, this chapter explores how the magazines further subverted traditional understandings of the role of women and their position in society. With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that they helped maintain women’s issues between the two ‘waves’ of feminism. In light of Betty Friedan’s assertion that women were uncritical consumers of mainstream magazines, this chapter also considers the extent to which women engaged with the magazines’ campaign for equality and reform. Though not prompting as many responses as other elements of women’s lived experiences, the workplace and reproductive rights are both topics that exercised readers. Of course, the letters we see in the magazines are only snippets of the views held in broader society, but they nonetheless confirm an active readership. The correspondence that not only addressed the editor or staff writers but also fellow readers offers an insight into the complex debates that were happening in society at the time.
Behan’s only novel, Borstal Boy (1958), unites two traditions of prison writing – Irish republican and queer male – which were already merged in Wilde’s De Profundis (1897/1905). As in Wilde and Jean Genet, in Behan’s novel the humiliation and pain of imprisonment is transformative and radicalising – a central trope of Irish republican prison writing – and this radicalisation is given narrative and imaginative form through the narrator’s erotic encounter with the male body as desirable and vulnerable. In Wilde the male body is that of Christ, in Genet and Behan it is that of youthful fellow prisoners (their youth taking on a symbolic significance as a rejection of development and ‘mature’ conformity to the performance principle). This style of writing homoerotic relations, as a bodily encounter of pleasure and solidarity rather than as an expression of identity, creates a literary space for imagining utopian possibilities. Echoing the narrative conjunction of two types of (republican and queer) prison writing, we can conceptualise those utopian possibilities as a political conjunction of Behan’s contemporaries, Herbert Marcuse and Frantz Fanon – the transformation of sexuality into Eros as correlative of the transformative leap from decolonisation to liberation.
Attending closely to Colm Tóibín’s trio of gay-themed novels ¬– The Story of the Night (1996), The Blackwater Lightship (1999) and The Master (2004) – we encounter a paradox: when their political imaginary is most closely aligned with a progressive sexual politics is also when these novels are most fully in conformity with the hegemonic neoliberal norms. But when the concerns and obsessions of the fiction seems furthest removed from progressive sexual politics is when its political imagination is potentially most radical. When Tóibín writes about the male body in pleasure and pain his fiction aesthetically and tonally generates affects which unsettle the hegemonic ‘common sense’ of neoliberalism – even while his characters and stories are committed to endorsing a resigned and ‘realistic’ submission to neoliberal political rationality.