The epic story of an Irish family in the 1840s immigrating to America, where love, adventure, tragedy, and a terrible secret are waiting.

Based on the recovery and analysis of the letters and private papers of the wife, daughters, daughters-in-law, and granddaughters of Richard Boyle (1566-1643), first earl of Cork, this book examines how these women perceived and wrote their lives as individuals and as members of their famous family. The book explores the theme of identity through close readings of the extant texts from a number of perspectives: the figuration of Ireland; gender; the impact of civil war rupture; Protestantism; and legacy-making. This original showcasing of the Boyle women's largely forgotten female-voiced texts further illuminates how these women used the occasion of family writing and record-keeping to develop self-presentation strategies that allowed them to situate their lives at the centre of the transformations that were taking place in early modern Ireland and Britain.

A collection of papers presented at the two-day conference 'The world of Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork, 1566-1643', held at University College Cork in June 2013.-- Page 11.

This is a revealing account of the family life and achievements of the Third Earl of Rosse, a hereditary peer and resident landlord at Birr Castle, County Offaly, in nineteenth-century Ireland, before, during and after the devastating famine of the 1840s. He was a remarkable engineer, who built enormous telescopes in the cloudy middle of Ireland. The book gives details, in an attractive non-technical style which requires no previous scientific knowledge, of his engineering initiatives and the astronomical results, but also reveals much more about the man and his contributions – locally in the town and county around Birr, in political and other functions in an Ireland administered by the Protestant Ascendancy, in the development and activities of the Royal Society, of which he was President from 1848–54, and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The Countess of Rosse, who receives full acknowledgement in the book, was a woman of many talents, among which was her pioneering work in photography, and the book includes reproductions of her artistic exposures, and many other attractive illustrations.

"A great deal more than a popular biography of one of Ireland's greatest chieftains. It is also a graphic portrait of life in Gaelic Ireland, When the Gaels were making their last stand against the English invaders, and the Gaelic way of life was abo