Irish Provincial Cultures in the Long Eighteenth-Century: Making the Middle Sort

In this book, 13 distinguished historians of early modern Ireland recreate the lost world of those who carved out a middle position between the aristocracy and the tenantry of provincial Ireland. These essays chart the sometimes uneasy relationships between local and wider worlds, consider the societies that those in provincial Ireland made for themselves, and document the material goods with which they adorned the places they occupied. The book considers aspects of the long 18th century, as diverse as music, wine consumption, buildings, paintings, plasterwork, and print, as well as the better-known subjects of the law, landlord improvement, and literary patronage. It builds a fascinating picture of a restless society trying to adapt itself to the needs of a complex and divided world. It provides new insights and perspectives on a world that is usually seen through the windows of the Parliament House or the Episcopal Palace. In doing so, the book reveals much about the texture of a world that is gradually coming to be understood as the fascinating and complex society in which the middling sort sought their own salvation in a vortex of political, economic, and religious change. *** .. .The essays…describe a ‘world that was neither a kingdom or a colony’; the innovative lines of inquiry found in this volume will also be of interest to those working outside of the revisionist paradigm. In particular, the focus on the circulation and consumption of print and other commodities from abroad suggests new directions for those employing transatlantic or archipelagic approaches, while chapters by Cunningham and Bergin add to our understanding of the contingent, fluid, and hybrid nature of Ireland’s Gaelic and Jacobite cultures. A?A?A?A? New Hibernia Review, Winter 2013