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The four Latin ‘ lives'of St Laurence O'Toole (with ancillary material) were critically edited for a doctoral thesis by Maurice Roche in 1981. Sadly Dr Roche died in an accident in 2003. The thesis went ‘ missing'but photographs of it were made available to Mary Kelly and from these Charles Doherty and Mary produced this book. Contact was made with Dr Roche's relatives who were happy to see his work in print. It was a two volume thesis (now reduced to one). The first consisted of chapters on the life and career of Laurence and invaluable analyses of each of the ‘ lives'revealing the relationships among them and highlighting the very diverse approaches of the hagiographers to their material. The second contains the critical editions of the ‘ lives'. For the first time we have a complete dossier of the hagiography of the saint. Critical editions of documents concerning the canonisation and translation followed the ‘ lives'. Finally, draft translations of the two most important ‘ lives'(found by his relatives) are appended. The thesis is of fundamental importance for scholars working in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Irish, English and European history.

This volume takes inspiration from Professor Catherine Shannon's scholarship on Modern Irish and Irish American history and her advocacy for peace in Northern Ireland and features original research by distinguished scholars and social-justice activists on both sides of the Atlantic. The essays illuminate the historical relationship between Ireland and North America over past centuries. They offer new readings of the transatlantic crosscurrents that shape our understanding of Irish emigration and North American settlement, and constructions of ethnic Irish identities. This collection brings together respected Irish, British, American, and Canadian historians, literary scholars, and social-justice activists to address the following thematic approaches to the Irish and Irish American historical experience: • Famine impact and legacy • Boston Irish political culture • Irish Revolution-era nationalist activism • Northern Ireland conflict Considered from a range of historical, literary, political, and cultural perspectives, the essays collected here examine crucial forces connecting the ancestral home and the adopted homeland over centuries of Irish migration and North American settlement. They revise traditional depictions of ethnic Irishness in explorations of the Famine's consequence, ethnic Irish prominence in Boston, the 1916-era watershed, and Northern Ireland's troubled political and cultural landscape--lenses that expose crucial historical navigations across the Irish Atlantic. These new readings of the evolution of the ethnic identity collectively generate a major contribution to modern Irish and Irish American historical scholarship.

Ireland's Great Famine in Irish-American History: Enshrining a Fateful Memory offers a new, concise interpretation of the history of the Irish in America. Author and distinguished professor Mary Kelly's book is the first synthesized volume to track Ireland's Great Famine within America's immigrant history, and to consider the impact of the Famine on Irish ethnic identity between the mid-1800s and the end of the twentieth century. Moving beyond traditional emphases on Irish-American cornerstones such as church, party, and education, the book maps the Famine's legacy over a century and a half of settlement and assimilation. This is the first attempt to contextualize a painful memory that has endured fitfully, and unquestionably, throughout Irish-American historical experience.