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Welcome to Irish Academic Press Irish Academic Press is a long established Dublin-based publisher of high quality books of Irish interest. Our publishing programme includes Irish History, Contemporary Irish History, Military and Political History, Literature, Arts and the Media, Social History, Women's Studies and Genealogy. We hope that among our past and present titles you will find titles of interest.
Our new and forthcoming publications include several important and eagerly awaited titles. |
|  | Turning Points in Twentieth Century Irish History
Hachey, Thomas
Outstanding Academic Title - Choice 2011
Irish history has always turned on a variety of axes or 'turning points,' beyond the accounts of high politics. In acknowledging the profound changes that have shaped new approaches to research and writing within the historical discipline, Irish historiography now embraces not only the re-examination of pivotal events, but also eclectic dimensions that further enrich our understanding of the broader narrative. This collection explores themes such as: political murders during Ireland's Revolutionary period, the nature of women's employment and political activity, Easter Rising, Irish neutrality, and the Northern peace process. The contributions by leading scholars make this work a remarkable new assessment of modern Irish history.
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|  | The Last Irish Plague
The Great 'Flu Epidemic in Ireland
Foley, Caitriona
Winner: Publication Prize in Irish History, National University of Ireland Irish History Awards 2011
Judges' Comment: 'This is an excellent, multi faceted study of a relatively neglected episode. There is no aspect, however unexpected of the great flu that Dr Foley has not exhaustively researched in this fascinating and graphic historical reconstruction'.
Decimating as many as 100 million people in the space of a few months, the Great 'Flu of 1918-19 was one of the worst outbreaks of disease in global history, totally eclipsing the damage wreaked by the First World War. In Ireland, the Registrar-General felt that not since the Great Famine had an outbreak of disease caused such havoc. The flu found its way into every corner of the country, infecting as many as 800,000 people, and taking over 20,000 lives. All across Ireland, there were many cases of families being almost wiped out by this mysterious malady as hospitals and workhouses heaved with the sudden influx of 'flu-stricken patients. Despite the fact that it claimed many more lives than the Easter Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War combined, the Great 'Flu is rarely incorporated into the narrative of twentieth century Ireland. 'The Last Irish Plague' explores this catastrophe, teasing out the full dimensions of a lethal and widespread outbreak of disease. It offers an illuminating account of an event which has slipped through the historical net, a part of the Irish past which has remained undocumented for almost a hundred years.
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|  | Special Category
O'Donnell, Ruan
This ground-breaking book explores the history of Irish republican prisoners held in English prisons during the first phase of the Troubles. The arrival of the first of over 200 IRA members into the Dispersal System challenged a penal environment devised to cope with a relatively small number of long-term criminal inmates and inspired a range of Home Office reforms. The republicans exacerbated tensions within the limited range of facilities suitable for 'Category A' prisoners and played leading roles in the major Hull Riot of 1976, as well as numerous other confrontations. Special Category draws upon unprecedented access to participants in order to detail and analyze the phenomena of the IRA in English prisons. Extensive new information is presented on IRA activities within the Dispersal System, not least planning and participation in riots, protests, legal challenges, escapes (successful and unsuccessful), and violent actions. Day-to-day factors - such as interaction with British prisoners, family visits, education, 'ghosting,' and attitudes towards prison staff - are documented in depth. Extensive use has been made of private collections of correspondence and papers, state archives, political prints, and international media reports. Account is taken of the perspective of the Home Office and British government, based on declassified documents, memoirs of key protagonists, and official records of parliamentary business. The attitude of the Irish government is also assessed. The book also draws upon unprecedented access to participants. Over 120 ex-prisoners, republican activists, members of prisoner support organizations, and prisoners' relatives have gone on the record. It is the single most authoritative and comprehensive history of any aspect the political prisoner experience in the modern Troubles.
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|  | Belfast and Derry in Revolt
A New History of the Start of the Troubles
Prince, Simon; Warner, Geoffrey
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a civil war emerged in Northern Ireland. This book examines the civil war - also known as the Troubles - in the cities of Belfast and Derry. Its original archival research traces how multiple and overlapping conflicts unfolded in the streets of these two cities. The Troubles grew out of a political process that mobilized opponents and defenders of the Stormont regime, and which also dragged London and Dublin into the crisis. Drawing upon government papers, police reports, army files, intelligence summaries, evidence to inquiries, and parish chronicles, this book sheds fresh light and a unique perspective on key events, such as: the October 5, 1968 march; the Battle of the Bogside; the Belfast riots of August 1969; the Battle of St. Matthew's; and the Falls Road curfew. This cutting-edge book offers two richly-detailed engaging narratives that intertwine and present a new history of the start of the Troubles in Belfast and Derry. It also establishes a foundation for comparison with similar developments elsewhere in the world.
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|  | Loyal to the Core?
Orangeism and Britishness in Northern Ireland
McAuley, James; Mycock, Andrew; Tonge, Jonathan
The Orange Order remains the largest organization in Northern Irish civil society, with a membership exceeding the combined total of all the political parties in the region. This book provides the first comprehensive membership survey of the Orange Order. Loyal to the Core? draws upon a detailed study of the Orange Order and on a wealth of individual interviews with Orange leaders and the Order's grassroots base. It begins with a historical outline of the Order's development, before turning to a detailed assessment of its contemporary struggle for relevance amid political marginalization, secularism, and diminished benefits to its membership. The book charts the views of members on how to adapt to external changes, explores the sense of belonging provided by membership, analyzes the repositories of loyalty that fuel their sense of Britishness, and assesses how the century-old relationship with the Ulster Unionist Party was replaced by a shift in allegiances. The book also examines the calls for Unionist unity made by the leadership and analyzes the membership's desire for a broad Unionist front.
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|  | Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales
Origins and Contexts
Markey, Anne
This book offers an innovative revaluation of Oscar Wilde's two collections of fairy tales, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891). Providing a comprehensive account of Wilde's familiarity with Irish folklore, this study challenges the prevailing consensus that the stories draw heavily on such material. By emphasizing Wilde's own stated views on the subject - and so contesting the assumption that he simply shared the well-documented interests of his parents, Sir William Wilde and Lady Jane Wilde ('Speranza') - the book relocates the stories within a variety of literary, cultural, and narrative traditions, both Irish and European. Acknowledging Wilde's often ambivalent and ambiguous statements about his Irish national identity, Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales: Origins and Contexts offers a more nuanced understanding of the importance of Ireland to Wilde's art. The detailed readings of the fairy tales show that, despite the stories' continuing appeal to children, Wilde intended his fairy tales for a predominantly adult audience. The book also demonstrates the ways in which, despite their eerie and disturbing content, these fairy tales reaffirmed conservative values.
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|  | The Churchills in Ireland 1660-1965
Connections and Controversies
McNamara, Robert
Since the 17th century, the Churchill family, one of Britain's greatest political and military dynasties, has had an enormous impact on the history of Ireland. This book traces this relationship in a series of essays examining the connections and controversies. It explores the key figures in the Churchill family who influenced Irish history and politics, including the first Sir Winston Churchill, the First Duke of Marlborough, Lord Randolph Churchill, and Winston Churchill himself. Also included in the collection are Bourke Cockran and Brendan Bracken, two important Irish Churchillians who were influential figures in their own right in the US and Britain respectively. This comprehensive overview provides a fascinating assessment of one British family's important influence on the course of Irish history.
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|  | Asking Angela Macnamara
An Intimate History of Irish Lives
Ryan, Paul
Angela Macnamara wrote an advice column for Ireland's The Sunday Press newspaper and was perhaps the most influential agony aunt in Irish journalism in the 1960s and 1970s. Using Macnamara's letters published by The Sunday Press, this fascinating book offers a unique insight into intimate relationships within family life in Ireland. It charts how dating and married couples negotiated a new understanding of their intimate lives, and it shows how women rejected relationships where sex was a duty within marriage as opposed to an expression of love. The analysis of the column's letters reveal how this transition provoked anxiety among Angela Macnamara's conservative readership as they struggled to reconcile seeing their bodies less as conduits of sin and more as instruments of pleasure. The problem page became a vehicle through which people explored these two different understandings. Asking Angela Macnamara explores these developments within intimate life as part of a greater process of informalization within Irish society. Children demanded that their parents defend and explain their use of corporal punishment in the home. The faithful questioned the Catholic Church's position on moral issues, such as contraception and homosexuality. Gay men questioned why their sexuality was both criminalized by the State and treated as a disorder by the psychiatric profession. Angela Macnamara emerges from these debates as both a traditionalist in defending Catholic social teaching and a modernist in encouraging an open discussion of sexuality.
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|  | What Else Could I Do?
Single Mothers and Infantacide, Ireland 1900-1950
Rattigan, Cliona
This powerful book explores the history of single mothers and infanticide in Ireland over a 50 year period. Based primarily on underused archival material from the Central Criminal Court in the National Archives of Ireland, 'What Else Could I Do?' provides a detailed analysis of the diverse experiences of unmarried mothers who faced criminal charges because they were suspected of having committed infanticide. Although statistics relating to female perpetrators of serious forms of crime are examined, the history of single women who killed their illegitimate infants cannot be understood through official numbers alone. The book undertakes a detailed case-by-case analysis of the records of over 300 infanticide cases tried in Ireland - both North and South - during the first half of the 20th century. This timely study will make an important contribution to historical scholarship and adds considerably to existing knowledge of female criminal behavior in Ireland. It is also a major contribution to the historical understanding of gender relations, class, sexuality, and family life.
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|  | Emerald Illusions
The Irish in Early American Cinema
Rhodes, Gary
Drawing on a massive array of primary sources, Emerald Illusions provides the first major history of the Irish-themed film in early American cinema. It revises prevailing scholarly views in this area by using rigorous historical research to reframe how we understand these films and the audiences who viewed them. The book begins by examining the origins of these films in such pre-cinema entertainment as Irish-themed stage plays, vaudeville acts, and magic lantern slides, revealing their various influences on early American cinema. As a result, lost histories are reclaimed, including the story of the Irish-themed illustrated song slide. Emerald Illusions explores genres such as comedy, melodrama, and non-fiction, discussing repeated narratives and images that surfaced in the American cinema between 1894 and 1915. In addition to covering notable moving pictures of the era, the book also chronicles a wealth of films not previously catalogued in studies of Irish cinema, including work by such luminaries as D.W. Griffith. With the aid of over 100 rare photographs, Emerald Illusions covers a half-century of Irish-themed entertainment in America, providing fresh insights through the lens of previously unknown resources.
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|  | Irish Masculinities
Reflections on Literature and Culture
Magennis, Caroline; Mullen, Raymond
This collection features a variety of contributors - from emerging voices in Irish literary criticism to established scholars in the field - who provide a fearless interrogation of the conventional readings of the representation of Irish men. In particular, these essays deconstruct the notion of masculinity as a fixed stable identity and explore the plurality of representations of manhood in literature and culture. Several of the essays look at hybridity in Irish male identity and the idea of diasporic identity, as well as discussing male identity in the domestic sphere. They consider masculinities (both north and south of the border) in a diverse range of topics (from O'Duffy's Blueshirts to Belfast drag queens and consumer culture), bringing a much-needed sophistication to the issue of masculinity in Irish studies.
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|  | Slouching Towards Jerusalem
Reactive Nationalism in the Irish, Israeli and Palestinian Novel, 1985-2005
Maher, John
Slouching towards Jerusalem is a unique contribution to comparative literature - Irish, Israeli, and Palestinian - that deals with the under-researched phenomenon of reactive nationalism - emotional rather than ideological nationalism. It is the only comparative study of its kind involving the three literatures, reflecting its author's long term engagement with two arenas of conflict: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Northern Irish conflict. The book surveys these through the eyes of contemporary novelists from both arenas. Slouching towards Jerusalem's selection is wide and varied, and includes both lesser-known and emergent novelists. Author John Maher is a prizewinning novelist himself, who uses various prisms - of language, land, religion, love, war, and the changing image of the enemy - in his quest for insight into the realities behind the novelists' portrayals of their situations. His conclusions are iconoclastic and challenging as befits such a unique journey into the three contrasting contemporary literatures.
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|  | Exhuming Passions
The Pressure of the Past in Ireland and Australia
Holmes, Katie; Ward, Stuart
History is constantly evoked to justify present political positions or to understand and interpret current events. But this is never a simple matter. This book contributes to the recurring public debate about the intrusions of past trauma, conflict, and discord into the controversies of the present. Exhuming Passions is an interdisciplinary collection of writings by highly esteemed Australian and Irish scholars about the different ways in which the past is remembered and contested in Ireland and Australia. The book deals with highly topical issues, such as the ways in which war is remembered and commemorated; governmental apologies for harms done by previous generations or governments; film and literature constructs of the past; and, not least, the responsibility of scholars for recording and interpreting truths about the past.
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| | |  | Between Shadows
Modern Irish Writing and Culture
Foster, John
Now available in paperback, Between Shadows is a sequel to John Wilson Foster's acclaimed Colonial Consequences (1991) and, like its predecessor, is a wide-ranging encounter with modern Irish writers and modern Irish culture. Among the writers are Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Martin McDonagh, Tim Robinson, Conor McPherson, and Sebastian Barry. The wartime Ulster literary scene, the celebration of Bloomsday, Irish nationalism, and the Great War are among the cultural episodes and phenomena the author engages with in this varied set of critical engagements. *** If Irish literary and cultural criticism has taken off since the 1970s - and it has - John Wilson Foster is one of the main reasons. He has widened its conceptual horizon, provoked new debates, redefined old debates, and helped to make other critics as historically conscious as he is himself. ~ from the Foreword by Edna Longley
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| We welcome manuscript proposals and ideas in all the subject areas outlined above and these can be directed to our Editor, Lisa Hyde: lisa.hyde@iap.ie
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