Teague Land, or A Merry Ramble to the Wild Irish

John Dunton, edited and with an introduction by Andrew Carpenter

John Dunton, the eccentric London bookseller, left two accounts of his visit to Ireland in 1698. One, entitled The Dublin Scuffle, was published in 1699 and in a new edition by Four Courts Press in 2000.

The other, 'Teague land' (1698), is a vivid description of Dunton's experiences throughout Ireland, which has, until now, only been printed, in censored form. Dunton's lively -  if sometimes indecent - stories and his irreverent comments about late 17th-century Ireland and her people have remained in manuscript. This new edition, prepared from Dunton's manuscript by Professor Andrew Carpenter of UCD, prints the unexpurgated text. The result is a fascinating and hitherto unknown account of life in the Irish countryside just after the battle of the Boyne. Dunton's retelling of the stories he heard and his descriptions of everyday life in Ireland are particularly valuable for Irish folklorists. This is a vivid, lively text, which is not only entertaining in itself but also of considerable scholarly interest.

John Dunton was a bookseller in Dublin at the end of the seventeenth century. Andrew Carpenter is a professor of English at NUI Dublin.