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This volume celebrates the work of William O'Sullivan, the first
keeper of manuscripts at Trinity College, Dublin, who preserved,
made more accessible and elucidated the documents in his care. The
manuscripts throw new light on the society of Ireland, the place of
the learned and literate in that world, and its relations with
Britain, Europe and America. Some of these essays clarify technical
problems in the making of famous manuscripts, and bring out for the
first time their indebtedness to or influence over other
manuscripts. Others provide unexpected new information about the
reigns of Edward I and James I, Irish provincial society, the
process and progress of religious change and the links between
settlements in Ireland and North American colonization.
The value of inventories in charting how houses were arranged,
furnished and used is now widely appreciated. Typically, the
listings and valuations were occasioned by the death of an owner
and the consequent need to deal with testamentary dispositions.
That was not always so. The inventory for Castlecomer House, Co.
Kilkenny, for example, was drawn up to make a claim following the
house's devastation in the 1798 uprising. Mostly hitherto
unpublished, the inventories chosen give new-found insights into
the lifestyle and taste of some of the foremost families of the
day. Above stairs, the inventories show the evolving collecting
habits and tastes of eighteenth-century patrons across Ireland and
how the interiors of great town and country houses were arranged or
responded to new materials and new ideas. The meticulous recording
of the contents of the kitchen and scullery likewise sheds light on
life below stairs. Itemized equipment required for the brewhouse,
dairy, stables, garden and farmyard reflects the at times
significant scale of the communities the houses supported and the
remarkable degree of self-sufficiency at some of the demesnes. A
comprehensive index facilitates access to the myriad items forming
the inventories, while the books listed at three of the houses are
tentatively identified in separate appendices. A foreword together
with short preambles to the inventories set the households in their
historical context. Illustrated with contemporary engravings of the
houses and with portraits of the owners of the time, the
inventories will appeal to country-house visitors, historians of
interiors, patronage, collecting and material culture as well as to
scholars, curators, collectors, creative designers, film directors,
bibliographers, lexicographers and novelists. The eighteenth
century is the period onto which the Knight of Glin directed his
penetrating gaze as art historian. The book is dedicated to his
memory.
In this pioneering study of the material culture of Stuart and
Hanoverian Ireland, Toby Barnard reveals a hitherto unsuspected
richness and diversity of lifestyle, habitat and mentality. Like
its much-praised predecessor, 'A New Anatomy of Ireland', it
abounds with quirky people and vivid scenes, and amounts to a
striking reappraisal of Ireland under the Protestant Ascendancy.
The compass of the book is impressively wide, from the governing
elite of Dublin Castle to the varied metropolis of Dublin itself,
and to provincial towns and the countryside beyond. Looking yet
further, it follows the Irish overseas to Britain and to the
continent of Europe. What emerges is a world more crowded with
stylish buildings, gardens, pictures and belongings than has often
been imagined. Through such everyday articles as linen shirts,
wigs, silver teaspoons, pottery plates and engravings, Barnard
evokes an amazing variety of lives and attitudes. Possessions, he
shows, even horses and dogs, highlighted and widened divisions, not
only between rich and poor, women and men, but also between Irish
Catholics and the Protestant settlers.Displaying fresh evidence and
unexpected perspectives, the book throws important new light on
Ireland during a formative period. Its discoveries, set within the
context of the 'consumer revolution' gripping Europe and North
America, allow Ireland for the first time to be integrated into
discussions of the pleasures and pains of consumerism. Toby Barnard
is a fellow and tutor in history at Hertford College, Oxford. He is
an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy. His companion
volume, 'A New Anatomy of Ireland: The Irish Protestants,
1649-1770' is also available from Yale University Press.
In recent years, archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists and
specialists in design, architecture and art have developed
techniques that are now being exploited by historians. Dr Barnard
provides a guide to some of the theories and their implications.
The materials available to the historian include surviving
buildings, artefacts and human interventions in the landscape
itself; others, no longer visible, can be reconstructed from
apparently unpromising documents like bills, advertisements, tax
records and account books.
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