Ourselves alone?

Ourselves Alone?  Religion, society and politics in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Ireland.  Essays presented to S.J. Connolly. W. Hayton and Andrew R. Holmes (editors)

(Four Courts Press), 2016 240pp., £50 hard, ISBN 978-1-84682-592-7

This volume was conceived as a tribute to Sean Connolly, who is scheduled to retire next year as Professor of Irish History at Queen’s University, Belfast and his contribution to the development of Irish history in the last three decades is reflected in the editorial introduction and in the extensive bibliography of his publications to 2014.  This collection of essays reflects Connolly’s interests and a range of topics in the history of Ireland between the Williamite Revolution and the mid-nineteenth century, an era of massive social and political change. The essays consider political and literary responses to the development of Ireland’s ‘confessional state’, the origins of protest movements, the impact of evangelical religion, the expansion of education and shifts in gender relations.