Mike Collins

Thomas Murray’s The Story of the Irish in Argentina was first published in New York in 1919. During the nineteenth century, nearly 45,000 Irish-born individuals emigrated to Argentina. They were members of medium tenant families from Westmeath, Longford, Offaly, and Wexford (though Dublin, Cork, and Clare were well represented as well). 


This edition, with a valuable introductory essay by Michael John Geraghty, who has lived for over 40 years in Buenos Aires, makes an important, critical account of Ireland’s lesser-written-about diasporas available again.Thomas Cornelius Murray  (1871-1959), historian, was born in Kilbeggan, Co. Westmeath, probably the son of Patrick Murray and Anne Molloy. In 1897 he emigrated with his family to the United States and in the first years of the twentieth century he went to Argentina. Murray left Buenos Aires in 1913 with the objective to publish in New York his history of the Irish in Argentina as well as some of his poems. The book, The Story of the Irish in Argentina was published by P.J. Kennedy & Sons in 1919 and in 1924 Murray returned to Argentina to promote his work.  The book was received unsympathetically by the Irish-Argentine media and community. "Although there are some assertions when the author advances his own personal opinions, with which we are not in agreement, we find this book intensely interesting" (The Southern Cross). His work remains the only published history, in English, about the Irish emigration to Argentina.

May 2012 ISBN 978-185918-474-5, €39 £35 Softback 262 x 176mm   366 pages

This new edition of The Story of the Irish in Argentina becomes, then, a landmark on the road to recovering the history and contribution of an Irish emigrant community, and a point of departure - together with other more recently published investigations - for the study of a ‘forgotten’ diaspora.

Imperial Refugee: Olivia Manning's Fictions of War by Eve Patten from Trinity College, Dublin is published by Cork University Press today.

Olivia Manning (1908-1980) had a reputation as a difficult personality and this has threatened to obscure her reputation as a writer. The book aims to recover Manning’s place as a pre-eminent novelist of British wartime experience. Manning belonged to a British literary generation which held tenaciously to its diverse Irish connections in the wartime years, but, as with Cyril Connolly or Lawrence Durrell, her claims on Irishness were intermittent and often distinctly pragmatic.

The book deals in depth with a diverse range of biographical, historical and literary detail. It examines the troubled interface between public and domestic narratives” and the ways in which Manning developed, through her experiences of living in Romania, Athens, Egypt and Jerusalem, her creative methods of politicising the refugee experience. As well as looking at Manning’s novels within their diverse settings the book also examines the varied literary modes Manning deploys and adapts – the gothic, autobiography and writing the self, the serial novel, the wartime and epic and more.

This full-length study will be of great interest to scholars of modern British literary and cultural history’, with relevance for students of postcolonial and transnational studies, the ‘Middlebrow’ and the Second World War period.

The author is Eve Patten who is Associate Professor in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin.
May 2012 ISBN 978-185918-482-0, €39, £35, Hardback, 234 x 156mm, 242pp

http://corkuniversitypress.com/Imperial_Refugee:_Olivia_Manning’s_Fictions_of_War/359/

Geographical (Magazine of the Royal Geographical Magazine) and with a readership of 106 000 has just published a review of the Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape.

This second edition of the Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape is much more than a reprint of the 1997 original. The editors explain that the text has been revamped and expanded (including five new case studies) and that more than 500 maps and photos have been added. The results are spectacular. There is extraordinary detail within these pages and readers will learn everything they could ever hope to know about the impact of nine millennia of human activity on the Irish landscape: a landscape that reveals the process of 'history in slow motion'.

The Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape provides excellent overviews: from the forts and tombs of ancient Ireland, through the bustling ecclesiastical landscape of the medieval era, to the tribulations and triumphs of the modern age (British colonialism, famine and, in recent memory the island's economic boom times). The books greatest joy is that, while scholarly, it's highly readable and very pretty. The maps and pictures are wonderful and the sections that deal with specific phenomena (fields and forests, housing and mines, transport routes, energy supplies and much besides are exemplary.

Ireland is changing, not least because the population is now far more urbanised than anyone could have predicted a century ago. But, as this book demonstrates wonderfully, it's landscape has been in flux for thousands of years.

This is one of the most accessible and engaging books you're ever likely to read about Ireland, which isn't something that can often be said of an atlas.

Jonathan Wright Geographical (Magazine of the Royal Geographical Magazine) April 2012

Transforming 1916: Meaning, memory and the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising by Roisín Higgins from Boston College-Ireland, Dublin and published by Cork University Press is published today. 

The fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising has been held responsible for everything from the outbreak of conflict in Northern Ireland to the alienation of an entire generation in the Republic of Ireland. This book examines the myths behind the most elaborate commemoration of the Rising to date.

Transforming 1916 explores the meaning and memory of the Easter Rising in 1966 and the way in which history operated in Ireland at a moment of rapid change. Transforming 1916 looks at the commemorative process through parades, statues, pageants, television programmes, exhibitions and documentary film; and considers the tensions present north and south of the border. It argues that the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising was not, in fact, an unrestrained celebration of Ireland’s past but represented instead an attempt by the Irish government to convey a message of modernisation and economic progress. Transforming 1916 casts light on what 1916 means in Ireland and illuminates the politics of commemoration as the centenary of the Rising approaches.

ISBN 978-185918-486-8, €39, £35, Hardback, 234 x 156mm, 288pp

www.corkuniversitypress.com

Today the first day of Spring, we have just taken delivery of Webb’s An Irish Flora, eighth edition. This is an indispensable guide for you if you are out walking or just working in your garden. The last edition appeared in 1996 with 372 pages this new expanded edition has 560 pages with hand- painted illustrations. In addition, trees, shrubs and climbers in winter are now covered for the first time. There is also a new section on those plants that have legal protection in Ireland. Michael Viney will be reviewing the book for the Irish Times

...this flora remains the most useful pocket guide to the Irish flora-National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin
 

This handbook will provide you with a clear and reliable means of identifying those plants which grow wild in Ireland. This book is a comprehensive re-working of the classic and standard Flora of Ireland which was last published 16 years ago: this will be the eighth edition of that work. It has been brought fully up to date through incorporating the latest in botanical research and it reflects contemporary and modern approaches to plant classification based on recent advances in genetics.

This book is about the higher plants that grow wild and which are commonly naturalised or otherwise encountered in Ireland. It is designed to help you identify and provide you with background information on plant morphology, distribution and rarity and to educate all those interested in recognising the species of the flora of Ireland.

Previous editions of the book have been used by workers outside of the specific field of study of plant identification – such as environmental consultants, the general public, students, professional and amateur botanists etc. There is a genuine demand for a Flora whose subject matter refers explicitly to Ireland whilst placing that flora in a wider context. Furthermore, a concise flora of a discrete geographical area is of interest internationally to many professional and amateur botanists and gardeners. The book has, is and will be used in student training (it is used as a basic botanical text book in some Universities in Ireland) and on training courses for professionals wishing to improve their skills and for all those needing to improve their levels of botanical expertise.

ISBN 978-185918-478-3, €35, £30, Hardback, 135 x 194mm,   560 pages,   8^th edition, March 2012

John Parnell is Professor of Systematic Botany at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and Dr. Tom Curtis is an Ecological Consultant and a Research Associate in Botany at TCD and an Adjunct Lecturer in Botany and Plant science, NUI Galway.

Cork University Press now has the titles below available on Kindle from Amazon. The books are all under €10 and have preview pages for you to look at.

Abuse: Domestic Violence, Workplace and School Bullying [Kindle Edition] http://tinyurl.com/7t9av2a

Bird's Nest Soup [Kindle Edition] http://tinyurl.com/7vxon2b

Lyn: A Story of Prostitution [Kindle Edition]  http://tinyurl.com/76bz5a9

Ivor Browne: Music and Madness [Kindle Edition] http://tinyurl.com/75ad52o

A Woman to Blame: The Kerry Babies Case [Kindle Edition] http://tinyurl.com/7r68s4z

Flown the Nest [Kindle Edition] http://tinyurl.com/7npdwka

Sisters: The Personal Story of an Irish Feminist[Kindle Edition] http://tinyurl.com/8649cde

Relationship, Relationship, Relationship [Kindle Edition] http://tinyurl.com/7orgwtr

Compassionate Intentions of Illness [Kindle Edition] http://tinyurl.com/76bowwz

Leadership With Consciousness [Kindle Edition] http://tinyurl.com/7el92qj

Regards

Mike

Mike Collins
Publications Director
Register your interest for the Atlas of the Great Irish Famine
http://greatirishfamine.ie/

Documentary in a Changing State: Ireland since the 1990s Edited by Carol MacKeogh and Díóg O'Connell is now available from Cork University Press.

The book will be launched by Professor Farrel Corcoran and the actor Stephen Rea at the United Arts Club in Dublin on 16th February.

It is a  timely collection of essays which examines the role of Irish documentary in film and television as Ireland experienced dramatic shifts in its social and political make-up in recent decades. Bringing together a diverse range of perspectives, this book tells it from the standpoint of the documentary-maker, the academic and the policy-maker. It reveals the role of documentary in telling stories that challenge the hierarchies of church and state, at the same time reflecting and representing the change brought about as a result in shifts to the political and social landscape. 

Documentary in a Changing State: Ireland since the 1990s includes a transcript of an interview with the late Mary Raftery. This book looks back over the last two decades through the prism of documentary to get a snap shot of the dramatic shifts and upheavals in Irish society, socially, culturally and politically

This book gives a fascinating insight into the working life of documentary makers - it captures the passion that drives them, the commitment they make to their craft, and the issues they tackle in defining what constitutes documentary – indeed, what constitutes good documentary.  This book will be read avidly not just by those in the business of creating and producing documentary but by a wide public who have learnt so much about their own society and culture through cutting-edge documentaries.
Miriam O’Callaghan, RTÉ Broadcaster

February 2012 ISBN 978-185918-491-2, €39, £35, Hardback, 234 x 156mm, 194pp

Carol MacKeogh and Díóg O'Connell work in the Department of Humanities, Art Design and Technology, Dun Laoghaire, Ireland

The remaining Attic & Atrium titles are now available from Apple iBooks at €9.99. These ebooks will be available from Amazon and other ebook suppliers next month. Web surfers using an iPad or iPhone with iBooks installed will be taken straight into the iBooks store application, while everyone else is forwarded to a page about that book on Apple’s regular website.

Bird’s Nest Soup by Hanna Greally

Hanna Greally spent the best part of the 1940s and 1950s incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital in the Irish Midlands. In Birds Nest Soup she recounts with vivid detail the terrible suffering she endured there. Though mentally well, and accepted as such by the authorities, she was condemned to life in an atmosphere calculated to bring about the steady degradation of the person. But Hanna lived to tell this remarkable and poignant tale of survival.

http://itunes.apple.com/ie/book/isbn9781908634313

Flown the Nest by Hanna Greally

Hanna Greally spent the best part of the 1940s and 1950s incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital in the Irish Midlands. In her first book Birds Nest Soup she recounted with vivid detail the terrible suffering she endured there. Hanna’s story continues with an account of her life in Coolamber Manor Rehabilitation Centre in Co. Longford, the place from where she hoped to gain freedom ‘prodigously and for ever’ and to ‘soon be a citizen, vote, earn money, even do crosswords and perhaps become well off’. If Hanna became part of the civil dead in St. Loman’s we can now, for the first time, read alongside her restoration to citizenship and to personal autonomy.

http://itunes.apple.com/ie/book/isbn9781908634320

A Woman to Blame: the Kerry Babies Case By Nell McCafferty

Joanne Hayes, at 24 years of age, concealed the birth and death of her baby in County Kerry, Ireland, in 1984. Subsequently she confessed to the murder, by stabbing, of another baby. All of the scientific evidence showed that she could not have had this second baby. The police nevertheless, insisted on charging her and, after the charges were dropped, continued to insist that she had given birth to twins conceived of two different men

http://itunes.apple.com/ie/book/isbn9781908634375

The Compassionate Intentions of Illness by Tony Humphreys and Helen Ruddle

Illness, death and dying are part and parcel of human life. Despite amazing advances in medical science there is never going to be a time when we can prevent against ever having the experience of illness. This book seeks to add to the alleviation of the suffering of illness by finding greater understanding of the psychological meaning and purpose of that experience.

http://itunes.apple.com/ie/book/isbn9781908634368

The first few titles from our trade imprints Attic Press & Atrium are now available as ebooks on the Apple ibooks platform. Web surfers using an iPad or iPhone with iBooks installed will be taken straight into the iBooks store application, while everyone else is forwarded to a page about that book on Apple’s regular website. The titles below are all priced at €9.99.

Abuse: Domestic Violence, Workplace and School Bullying  by Jim O’Shea -€9.99

The book examines abuse (not clerical or institutional abuse). It explores boundaries and how abuse is an invasion of boundaries. It explores physical, emotional, verbal, sexual and financial abuse. The book looks at the abusive personality type, and examines workplace and school bullying. Child abuse is explored, and the issue of staying in or leaving an abusive environment. The question of what happens if one leaves and if it is possible to change an abusive personality is examined. A client’s story is contained in the book and this gives a human aspect to the exploration.

 http://itunes.apple.com/ie/book/isbn9781908634306

Sisters by June Levine- €9.99

Sisters is a revealing, intensely readable book by one of Ireland’s finest feminist writers. It contains a major assessment of the women’s movement in Ireland, but first and foremost it tells the story of one woman’s search for personal fulfilment.

http://itunes.apple.com/ie/book/isbn9781908634351

 Ivor Browne: Music and Madness by Ivor Browne-€9.99

Ivor Browne is Professor Emeritus, University College, Dublin and retired as Chief Psychiatrist of the then Eastern Health Board in 1994. This book charts the growth of one man's journey in relation to psychiatry and human development. Ivor Browne has been a central and controversial figure in Irish life up until the mid-nineties when he retired

http://itunes.apple.com/ie/book/isbn9781908634337

Relationship, Relationship, Relationship: The Heart of a Mature Society by Tony Humphreys-€9.99

No matter where you are, what you are doing, whether you are alone or with others, you are always in relationships. Whatever the relationship, it is always a couple- relationship, whether this, for example, is a parent with a child, a lover with a lover, a manager with an employee, a student with a teacher, a neighbour with a neighbour. This book is concerned with the much neglected area of relationships as dyads involving two unique individuals, in all settings in which human beings live, work, pray and play

http://itunes.apple.com/ie/book/isbn9781908634344