‘A miserable thing to be a woman’

John Boyle, the Freeholder and pre-Famine Cork society

Neil Cronin

John Boyle was an orphan with a difficult upbringing, impoverished and a social misfit, yet he achieved great prominence in early nineteenth-century Cork. A dis…

The political world of Sir Thomas Henry Grattan Esmonde of Ballynastragh, Co. Wexford, 1862–1935

Brian Fennell

Politically active from 1885 to 1934, Thomas Henry Grattan Esmonde’s career spanned the home rule struggle, the First World War, the revolutionary decade and th…

Scandal, satire and the battle for reputation in Limerick’s ascendancy, 1815–20

Brian Leahy

This gripping account unravels the explosive feud between barrister-poet Thomas Grady, the controversial banker George Evans Bruce, and the politically ambitiou…

Donegal town, 1474–1974

Matthew Potter

Donegal town is one of the most historic places in Ireland, and has given its name to Co. Donegal. It has been a Gaelic town, a Plantation town, an estate town …

Ireland’s first sanitorium

The St Ann’s Hill Hydro, County Cork, 1843–1953

Sinéad McSweeney and Ronan Foley

The St Ann’s Hill Hydropathic Establishment, or The Hydro, was Ireland’s first and pre-eminent sanitorium. The Hydro was built in Co. Cork in 1843 and closed it…

Kildare

The Irish Revolution, 1912–23

Seamus Cullen

This is the first comprehensive single volume history of County Kildare during the Irish Revolution of 1912-23. A noted garrison county, the concentration of Br…

Finding Mary

The untold story of an Inishowen murder, 1844

Angela Byrne

During a robbery on 10 March 1844, 14-year-old servant Mary Doherty was murdered in a farmhouse near Culdaff, Co. Donegal. There was no doubt locally about the …