The Maamtrasna Murders of 1882--in which three men who spoke only Irish were wrongfully sentenced to death after a trial conducted fully in English--stand as one of the gravest miscarriages of justice in Irish history. In this book, Margaret Kelleher uses the Maamtransa case, notorious for its failure to interpretive and translation services to monoglot Irish speakers, as a starting point for an investigation into broader sociolinguistic issues. Uncovering archival materials not previously consulted, this book illuminates a story that has proven to be a much messier social narrative than previously recognized. Kelleher show that, although the wrongful execution of monolingual Irishmen have historically been the best-known feature of the case, the complex significance of language use in an isolated region mirrors the dynamics that continue to influence the fates of monolingual and bilingual people today.

In Modernism, Romance and the Fin de Siècle Nicholas Daly explores the popular fiction of the 'romance revival' of the late Victorian and Edwardian years, focusing on the work of such authors as Bram Stoker, H. Rider Haggard and Arthur Conan Doyle. Rather than treating these stories as Victorian Gothic, Daly locates them as part of a 'popular modernism'. Drawing on work in cultural studies, this book argues that the vampires, mummies and treasure hunts of these adventure narratives provided a form of narrative theory of cultural change, at a time when Britain was trying to accommodate the 'new imperialism', the rise of professionalism, and the expansion of consumerist culture. Daly's wide-ranging study argues that the presence of a genre such as romance within modernism should force a questioning of the usual distinction between high and popular culture.

The Little Book of Mayo is a compendium of fascinating, obscure, strange and entertaining facts about County Mayo. Here you will find out about Mayo's natural history, its myth and legend, its proud sporting heritage – particularly its long-running quest for Sam – and its famous (and occasionally infamous) men and women. Through quaint villages and bustling towns, this book takes the reader on a journey through County Mayo and its vibrant past. A reliable reference book and a quirky guide, this can be dipped into time and time again to reveal something new about the people, the heritage and the secrets of this ancient county.

In Scandal Work: James Joyce, the New Journalism, and the Home Rule Newspaper Wars, Margot Gayle Backus charts the rise of the newspaper sex scandal across the fin de siècle British archipelago and explores its impact on the work of James Joyce, a towering figure of literary modernism. Based largely on archival research, the first three chapters trace the legal, social, and economic forces that fueled an upsurge in sex scandal over the course of the Irish Home Rule debates during James Joyce’s childhood. The remaining chapters examine Joyce’s use of scandal in his work throughout his career, beginning with his earliest known poem, “Et Tu, Healy,” written when he was nine years old to express outrage over the politically disastrous Parnell scandal. Backus’s readings of Joyce’s essays in a Trieste newspaper, the Dubliners short stories, Portrait of the Artist, and Ulysses show Joyce’s increasingly intricate employment of scandal conventions, ingeniously twisted so as to disable scandal’s reifying effects. Scandal Work pursues a sequence of politically motivated sex scandals, which it derives from Joyce's work. It situates Joyce within an alternative history of the New Journalism’s emergence in response to the Irish Land Wars and the Home Rule debates, from the Phoenix Park murders and the first Dublin Castle scandal to “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” and the Oscar Wilde scandal. Her voluminous scholarship encompasses historical materials on Victorian and early twentieth-century sex scandals, Irish politics, and newspaper evolution as well as providing significant new readings of Joyce’s texts.