Marked by names such as W. B. Yeats, James Joyce and Patrick Pearse, the decade 1910–1920 was a period of revolutionary change in Ireland, in literature, politics and public opinion. What fed the creative and reformist urge besides the circumstances of the moment and a vision of the future? The leading experts in Irish history, literature and culture assembled in this volume argue that the shadow of the past was also a driving factor: the traumatic, undigested memory of the defeat and death of the charismatic national leader Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891). The authors reassess Parnell's impact on the Ireland of his time, its cultural, religious, political and intellectual life, in order to trace his posthumous influence into the early twentieth century in fields such as political activism, memory culture, history-writing, and literature.

When this book was originally published in 1960 no full-length study of the Parnell ‘split’ had been made, despite it being such a landmark in Irish history. The book treats the eleven months between the verdict on the O’Shea divorce case the death of Parnell as a dramatic unity. This was the first modern work to provide a connected account of such neglected episodes as the ‘Boulogne negotiations’ and Parnell’s final campaign in Ireland. The crisis was a crisis for English liberalism as well as Irish nationalism and the author discusses the effects of the catastrophe upon Gladstone and his colleagues. The author obtained access to several valuable collections of private papers in England and Ireland which throw a lot of light upon the actions and opinions of the main participants in this famous tragedy.

This short biography outlines the scope of Davitt's great interests and achievements

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.