"People, Politics and Power" presents some of the most recent thinking on politics and society in Ireland from the Restoration to the Great Famine. Written by students and colleagues of James McGuire, the essays reflect McGuire's scholarly engagement with the interaction between the individual and the political arena, the Church of Ireland, the exercise of power in all its multifarious manifestations, and political biography. Each essay presents a new reading of the career of an emblematical figure, an important moment or a significant trend or issue, ranging across topics such as the legislative process, the politics of persuasion, life within the law and beyond it, constitutional change, religion and ideology. This book provides a stimulating new perspective on the various processes and influences that help to define people and their actions in Irish history between 1660 and 1850. James I. McGuire, the managing editor of the forthcoming seven-volume Dictionary of Irish Biography, lectured in history at University College Dublin for more than thirty years until his retirement in 2008. He was a highly respected editor of Ireland's leading history journal, Irish Historical Studies, for a number of years and is the author and editor of a series of seminal articles and collections that have had a major impact upon the historiography of Ireland. As chairman of the Irish Manuscripts Commission he has overseen a major revival in the published output and electronic resources of that body. As an undergraduate teacher and postgraduate supervisor, he nurtured sever generations of scholars in Irish history.

Robert Emmet's life, death, and immediate elevation into the pantheon of Irish nationalist heroes are well known. These essays on Emmet's life and legacy, however, demonstrate a new interdisciplinary approach to studies of the Irish nationalist hero. "Reinventing Emmet" includes essays on commemoration, literature, legal history and aspects of the Emmet legacy not explored elsewhere, such as studies of his influence on American culture, and draws on research from young as well as established scholars. Robert Emmet is an Irish (and Irish-American) nationalist icon. Although Emmet's rebellion of 1803 was an embarrassing failure, his speech from the dock prior to his execution for high treason has captured national and international imagination. The trial, the speech, and the image of Emmet have in many ways superseded his actual achievements, and have been perpetually reproduced across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, culminating in the bicentenary of Emmet's rebellion in 2003. But what is Emmet's legacy? Is there more to this iconic figure than a failed rebellion and a memorable speech?

Robert Emmet (1778-1803) was one of the most romantic of all Irish revolutionaries. He was the youngest son of Ireland s state physician and was educated privately at Trinity College Dublin. Like many young people in the early 1790s, he was caught up in the fervour of the French Revolution.

In the revolutionary year of 1798, when three different insurrections broke out in Ireland, he was expelled from Trinity College, thus ending his prospects of a professional career. He went to the Continent where he met both Napoleon and Talleyrand and returned to Dublin where he organised and led the doomed insurrection of May 1803. No foreign help came. There were probably spies in the camp, and Emmet s rising was quickly crushed. He was tried and executed, but not before making a speech from the dock which has resonated through subsequent Irish history. Romantic, impulsive and doomed: Emmet is one of the tragic heroes of the Irish past.

Geoghegan traces the details of his military preparations which involved much study, and then takes us through their rapid unravelling. The description of Emmet s jailing, trial and execution is consistently compelling. The speech, its various reported versions and its long posterity as an inspiring document are also clearly chronicled. Books Ireland, February 2003"