"The Repealer Repulsed" is an account of Daniel O'Connell's visit to Belfast in January 1840. Henry Cooke, the celebrated Presbyterian leader, publicly challenged O'Connell to debate Repeal during the visit. O'Connell refused to debate Cooke, partly because of his unwillingness to elevate his rival's stature but also for fear of violence. In contrast to O'Connell's usual triumphant rallies, the Belfast visit produced extensive rioting and the planned ceremonial welcomes for O'Connell in border towns were cancelled for fear of disorder. O'Connell himself travelled in disguise. Written and published in haste to discredit O'Connell, this book has been described as a foundation text of Ulster unionism. It contains one of the earliest statements of the economic case for Ulster unionism and provides valuable insight into the construction of political Protestantism.

"The Lady Next Door", in other words, Ireland, is an account of the tour of Ireland by a pro-Home Rule British Liberal journalist, published in 1914. It provides valuable interview material and personal impressions of several prominent Nationalists and Southern Unionists, giving a snapshot of the views of key activists on what they thought was the eve of Home Rule and their expectations of what a Home Rule Ireland would be like. He gives valuable insight into the ideological tensions of the Liberal-Nationalist alliance, particularly with reference to Nonconformist unease about the prospects for Ulster under Home Rule, the development of moralist rhetoric in defense of Liberal policy, and the tendency of some British commentators to idealize Ireland as a pious rural Arcadia.

Soon after Daniel O'Connell's death, Taylor published (as 'A Munster Farmer') this short account of the Liberator's life, drawing on his personal memories and on articles he had written for the Athenaeum in the 1840s. It includes eyewitness accounts of O'Connell's appearance as he walked through the streets of Dublin. Taylor shows personal sympathy for O'Connell as the leader of oppressed people, but he also sees his talents as distorted by the experience of oppression and by a conservative upbringing, and claims that his abusive and truculent oratory did as much to retard Catholic Emancipation as his tactical leadership did to advance it. This edition also includes a review article by Taylor in the Athenaeum of books including Carleton's Famine novel, The Black Prophet, and a long article on 'Repeal Songs of Munster', considering O'Connellite street-ballads as a study in human folly.

In "A Journey in Ireland 1921", originally published in 1922, Ewart relates memories of his journey of April and May 1921. He interviews prominent figures ranging from the Dublin Castle spin-doctor Basil Clarke, Sinn Fein activists in Cork and Limerick to Southern Unionists, former Home Rule MPs and the writer and commentator AE (George Russell). His attempt at a walking tour between Cork and Belfast led to his being interrogated both by British forces and by the IRA; his account ends with a description of Ulster Unionist public meetings addressed by James Craig and Dawson Bates as the Northern Ireland parliament and government were about to come into existence.A meticulous and intelligent observer, Ewart finds himself caught between fellow feeling for embattled British forces and dismayed at the state to which Ireland had been reduced. His account provides a striking pen-portrait of Ireland in the last stages of the War of Independence.

"In Belfast by the Sea" originally appeared as a series of 61 articles in the "Belfast Telegraph", 1923-4. They comprise Moore's recollections of Victorian Belfast and Bangor between his childhood in the 1860s and his departure for London in 1892. Highpoints are a tour of the city centre in which he recollects the shops and public buildings as they were in his youth, his reminiscences of his education at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, and his description of the city's musical and theatrical life. His descriptions of the development of the city's water and transport networks include an account of the first public appearance of the Dunlop inflatable tyre and travelling conditions on the early railway services.

This very vivid memoir describes the prison experiences of a Cork Fenian activist, John Sarsfield Casey. 'The Galtee Boy' was a name used by Casey when he sent letters for publication to newspapers, one of which was used against him at his trial in 1865. His memoir was written after he had returned from deportation and describes the period from his arrest in 1865, his trial in Cork and conditions in Mountjoy, Millbank, Pentonville and Portland prisons. His memoir is the most extensive surviving account from the Fenian side of the experiences of those prisoners detained in Cork. Biographies of people mentioned in the memoir are given in an appendix.

'To be sure I hated Ireland most cordially; I had never seen it, and as a matter of choice would have preferred New South Wales, so completely was I influenced by the prevailing prejudice against that land of barbarism!' Thus Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna recalled in her memoirs her view of Ireland as she had set off for that country in 1818. But she came to love Ireland, so much so that after her death her grave was planted with shamrocks. In this abridged version of the second edition of Personal Recollections (1847), Tonna gives a vivid account of her time in Ireland, of the violent activities of the Rockite movement in the mid-1820s in Kilkenny-Tipperary, and of the apocalyptic ultra-Evangelical 'siege mentality' during the Tithe War and the run-up to Catholic Emancipation. It is also a valuable memoir of her religious and literary development,

First published between 1898 and 1900 as a series of articles in the "New Ireland Review", "The Philosophy of Irish Ireland" was the most forceful manifesto produced by that section of the Gaelic Revival movement which saw Irish identity as inextricably Catholic and Gaelic. The book addresses the growing Catholic professional class educated in secondary schools run by religious orders, and attempts to instil a collective consciousness in this nascent elite. It shows that the Gaelic Revival would not inevitably lead to separatism; it could also be deployed in the service of an aggressively reinvented less deferential 'Catholic Whig' politics. It includes a new introduction by Patrick Maume.