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News
New book on Monaghan history launched next week
‘Monaghan history and society’ is the most comprehensive survey of Co. Monaghan’s past and contains up-to-date results of many years research by local, national and international scholars.
The book will be officially launched at St. Macartan’s College, Monaghan on Monday 19 June 2017 by Minister Heather Humphreys, T.D.
The details in the book ranges in scope over 2000 years, from the Black Pig’s Dyke to the 20th century. Using many maps of the county’s townlands and parishes, it looks at society and landscape in the Middle Ages and through the 17th and 18th-century plantations and conflicts in this south Ulster borderland. It assesses how these events shaped the later history of politics and community in chapters on 1798, Charles Gavan Duffy, Home Rule, the rise of Sinn Féin, the First World War, 1916 and the War of independence. The fate and survival of written and spoken Irish through the centuries is also outlined through manuscript records and oral history.
There are special offerings from contemporary Monaghan writers - novelist Eugene McCabe, poet Mary O’Donnell and performer Oliver Callan, as well as essays on Charles Gavan Duffy, on the legacies of Patrick Kavanagh, and on the diaries of Annyalla schoolmaster (and father of the editor) Patsy Duffy which offer a snapshot in time on rural life in the 30s and 40s.
There are also accounts of emigration and emigrants from the county over the centuries. The material landscape of great houses, mills, creameries, and the important contribution of Monaghan County Museum are discussed as well as the management of Monaghan’s heritage today.
Edited by Monaghan men, Patrick J Duffy (from Cremartin and Maynooth University) and Éamonn O Ciardha (Scotshouse and University of Ulster), Monaghan history and society will stand as a landmark record of the county’s history for many years to come.
Containing 36 chapters in 950 pages with an extensive index, and published by Geography Publications Dublin (http://www.geographypublications.com/).
The front cover of the new book