The Centenary Classics series examines the fascinating time of change and evolution in the Ireland of 100 years ago during the 1916-23 revolutionary period. Each volume is introduced by Fearghal McGarry who sets the scene of this important period in Ireland's history. Civil War in Ulster, originally published in 1913, analyses the events leading up to the massive arming of the Orangemen which followed the Larne gun-running. Joseph Johnston was an Ulster Protestant writing as a liberal supporter of Home Rule. He gives the book's target Protestant readership an outline of recent Irish history, making the case that Home Rule had many positive features, and that none of the perceived negative features would be worth fighting a civil war to avoid. Although Johnston's objective in writing the book was unsuccessful and the point of view has been largely forgotten, his highly readable book provides a fascinating insight into the thoughts and fears of the population of Ulster at a critical time in Irish history and the foreword and introduction, by Tom Garvin and Roy Johnston, give a contemporary analysis of the thinking behind Johnston's unusual stand.

Essays by leading academic, political and media figures in honour of Brian Farrell, the well-known political interviewer and former member of the Department of Politics, in celebration of his 75th birthday in 2004. The essays cover aspects of history of Irish democracy, the role of government institutions and their relations with Europe, government finance, the party system, political campaigning for elections and referendums, the lobby system and government relations with the media.

Paralleling his friend Alexis de Tocqueville's visit to America, Gustave de Beaumont traveled through Ireland in the mid-1830s to observe its people and society. In "Ireland," he chronicles the history of the Irish and offers up a national portrait on the eve of the Great Famine. Published to acclaim in France, "Ireland" remained in print there until 1914. The English edition, translated by William Cooke Taylor and published in 1839, was not reprinted.

In a devastating critique of British policy in Ireland, Beaumont questioned why a government with such enlightened institutions tolerated such oppression. He was scathing in his depiction of the ruinous state of Ireland, noting the desperation of the Catholics, the misery of repeated famines, the unfair landlord system, and the faults of the aristocracy. It was not surprising the Irish were seen as loafers, drunks, and brutes when they had been reduced to living like beasts. Yet Beaumont held out hope that British liberal reforms could heal Ireland's wounds.

This rediscovered masterpiece, in a single volume for the first time, reproduces the nineteenth-century Taylor translation and includes an introduction on Beaumont and his world. This volume also presents Beaumont's impassioned preface to the 1863 French edition in which he portrays the appalling effects of the Great Famine.

A classic of nineteenth-century political and social commentary, Beaumont's singular portrait offers the compelling immediacy of an eyewitness to history.

The present-day Irish Republic was created by a revolutionary elite which developed between 1858 and 1900. This book analyses the social origins of the revolutionaries who became rulers of Ireland after 1921, and examines their political ideologies and prejudices. The author argues that they were heavily influenced not only by ancient agrarian grievances and memories of the Famine, but also by contemporary Catholic abhorrence of the Protestant and secular world represented by England and America. Personal resentments also played their part; many felt their faith, their nation, and their class were slighted in the British Ireland of the period, and regarded themselves as morally superior not only to their British and Anglo-Irish rulers, but also to to the vast mass of their Catholic fellow-countrymen and co-religionists. Drawing on the evidence of private letters and diaries, and the writings of popular journalism, Nationalist Revolutionaries makes an original contribution to Irish historiography by reconstructing the private thoughts behind the political public faces.

The Centenary Classics series examines the fascinating time of change and evolution in the Ireland of 100 years ago during the 1916-23 revolutionary period. Each volume is introduced by Fearghal McGarry who sets the scene of this important period in Ireland's history. The Victory of Sinn Fein, originally published in 1924, is an eyewitness account of events in Ireland from the Easter Rising of 1913 until 1923. It is written from a now almost forgotten viewpoint - that of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. O'Hegarty's heroes were Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins and he took the Pro-Treaty side in 1921, strongly opposing those who assumed a continuing mandate for force after ratification of the Treaty. The book contains vivid character sketches of Griffith, Collins and de Valera, and as Tom Garvin writes in his introduction 'it is...written with enormous passion, verve and energy; it reads like a thriller.'