A HISTORY OF MEDIAEVAL IRELAND FROM 1110 TO 1513. By
Edmund Curtis, M.A. (Macmillan and Co. 218.) Professor Curtis's study of mediaeval Ireland has been long anticipated, and it more than fulfils expectations, for it is a work of scholarship of the first importance ; it embraces the period 1110 to 1513, from the last native High Kings to the All-but-kingship " of the great Earl of Kildare, and Professor Curtis can justly claim that for the last part of this period, from 1333, he is a pioneer. Historians have too often tried to write the history of mediaeval Ireland without knowing Irish, but he is equally learned in records of Irish and English provenance, and it will be long before his work is superseded. It has not the glow and passion of Mrs. Green's famous political tract, but it is written soberly and fully documented. The passages in which he deals with the social institutions and economic activities of the Irish and Anglo-Irish are so full of interest that one is constrained to wish they had been more frequent ; but the wide scope of the book probably precluded a more detailed treatment of one side of the subject.
Previous page
