David Hayton examines the political culture of the Anglo-Irish ruling class, which had settled in Ireland in different ways over a long period and had differing degrees of attachment to England, and shows how its multi-faceted identity evolved.

The wars and revolutions of seventeenth-century Ireland established in power a ruling class of Protestant landowners whose culture and connexions were traditionally English, but whose interests and political loyalties were increasingly Irish. At first unsure of their self-image and ambivalent in their loyalties, they gradually became more confident and developed a distinctive notion of 'Irishness'. 'The Anglo-Irish Experience' explores the religious, intellectual and political culture of this new elite during a period of change and adjustment. D.W. Hayton traces both the shifting sense of national identity characteristic of the period and the changing stereotype of the Irish in English popular literature - which did much to push the 'Anglo-Irish' to embrace their Irish heritage. He also argues for the emergence of a pragmatic, constructive form of political 'patriotism', linked closely to the prevailing ideology of economic 'improvement' and underpinned by the influence of evangelical Protestantism. A key feature of the book is the use made of case studies of individuals and families: the decay of the Ormond Butlers, undermined by debt and eventually driven into political exile; the rise and fall of the Brodricks, gentlemen lawyers with a strong provincial power-base; the political journey of the politician and political writer Henry Maxwell, from 'commonwealth whig' ideologue to ministerial hack; and the relationship between Sir John Rawdon, a pious and intellectual squire, and his estate agent Thomas Prior, pamphleteer and apostle of 'improvement'. These and other narratives illustrate the variety and complexity of the 'Anglo-Irish' experience in a period that witnessed the foundation of what would in due course come to be known as the 'Protestant nation'. Early modern British and Irish historians will find this book invaluable. D.W. Hayton is Professor of Early Modern Irish and British History at Queen's University Belfast, and the author of 'Ruling Ireland, 1685-1742: Politics, Politicians and Parties' (Boydell, 2004).

This volume offers fresh perspectives on the political, military, religious, social, cultural, intellectual, economic, and environmental history of early modern Ireland and situates these discussions in global and comparative contexts. The opening chapters focus on 'Politics' and 'Religion and War' and offer a chronological narrative, informed by the re-interpretation of new archives. The remaining chapters are more thematic, with chapters on 'Society', 'Culture', and 'Economy and Environment', and often respond to wider methodologies and historiographical debates. Interdisciplinary cross-pollination - between, on the one hand, history and, on the other, disciplines like anthropology, archaeology, geography, computer science, literature and gender and environmental studies - informs many of the chapters. The volume offers a range of new departures by a generation of scholars who explain in a refreshing and accessible manner how and why people acted as they did in the transformative and tumultuous years between 1550 and 1730.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was an era of continuity as well as change. Though properly portrayed as the era of 'Protestant Ascendancy' it embraces two phases - the eighteenth century when that ascendancy was at its peak; and the nineteenth century when the Protestant elite sustained a determined rear-guard defence in the face of the emergence of modern Catholic nationalism. Employing a chronology that is not bound by traditional datelines, this volume moves beyond the familiar political narrative to engage with the economy, society, population, emigration, religion, language, state formation, culture, art and architecture, and the Irish abroad. It provides new and original interpretations of a critical phase in the emergence of a modern Ireland that, while focused firmly on the island and its traditions, moves beyond the nationalist narrative of the twentieth century to provide a history of late early modern Ireland for the twenty-first century.

Relates charity movements to religious impulse, Enlightenment 'improvement' and the fears of the Protestant ruling elite that growing social problems, unless addressed, would weaken their rule.

Recently, studies of opera, of print culture, and of music in Britain in the long nineteenth century have proliferated. This essay collection explores the multiple point of interaction among these fields. Past scholarship often used print as a simple conduit for information about opera in Britain, but these essays demonstrate that print and opera existed in a more complex symbiosis. This collection embeds opera within the culture of Britain in the long nineteenth century, a culture inundated by print. The essays explore: how print culture both disseminated and shaped operatic culture; how the businesses of opera production and publishing intertwined; how performers and impresarios used print culture to cultivate their public persona; how issues of nationalism, class, and gender impacted reception in the periodical press; and how opera intertwined with literature, not only drawing source material from novels and plays, but also as a plot element in literary works or as a point of friction in literary circles. As the growth of digital humanities increases access to print sources, and as opera scholars move away from a focus on operas as isolated works, this study points the way forward to a richer understanding of the intersections between opera and print culture.