News Archive
A book history first for History Ireland magazine
Ireland’s history magazine, History Ireland, makes a foray into book history in the September/October issue. James Cronin (School of History and Centre for Adult Continuing Education, UCC) unearths an eighteenth century bestseller to reveal the cosmopolitan tastes of Ireland’s Ascendancy class.
The feature article investigates the reception of an Irish edition of Richard Walter's narrative of a circumnavigation made by Commodore George Anson (1740-44). The Anglo-Irish family of novelist Elizabeth Bowen originally owned this particular edition. Fifty years ago, in April 1961, it was sold at public auction in Cork thus breaking a two hundred year connection with the Bowen family at Bowen’s Court in North Cork. This article, by means of an edition history, surveys intellectual cross-currents and reading cultures entwining Cork, Dublin and London during the mid-eighteenth century. Cronin recently presented a paper on this rare Irish edition to the Royal Geographical Society's annual conference held this year at Imperial College London. This study was funded by research grants made by the School of History and the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences (CACSSS), University College Cork with further support from the Historical Geography Research Group (a study group of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers) in London.
Follow link to History Ireland.