Originally published in 1960 and edited by Conor Cruise O'Brien, The
Shaping of Modern Ireland was a seminal work surveying the lives of
prominent early twentieth-century figures who influenced Irish affairs
in the years between the death of Charles Stewart Parnell in 1891 and
the Easter Rising of 1916. The chapters were written by leading
historians and commentators from the Ireland of the 1950s, some of whom
personally knew the subjects of their essays. This volume draws its
inspiration from that seminal work. Written by some of today's leading
figures from the world of Irish history, politics, journalism and the
arts, it revisits a crucial phase in the country's history, one that
culminated in the Easter Rising and the Revolution, when everything
'changed utterly'. With chapters on men and women of the stature of
Carson, Connolly and Markievicz, but also industrialists such as
Guinness who contributed to 'shaping modern Ireland' in the social and
economic sphere, this book offers an important contribution to the
renewal of the debate on the country's history. [Subject: History,
Irish Studies]
