This ten-volume series covers the history of Ireland from earliest times to the present. Representing a harvesting of modern scholarship on the subject, its contributors are mainly historians, but include historical geographers and specialists in other related disciplines such as languages and literature, the visual arts, and music.

The present volume opens with a character study of the period, followed by twenty chapters of narrative history, with a survey of 'Land and people, c 1841'. Further chapters cover the economy, legal developments, literature in English, education, administration and the public service, and emigration, ending with a study of Ireland in 1870.

Contributors: D. H. Akenson, J. C. Brady, R. V. Comerford, S. J. Connolly, James S. Donnelly, jr., David Noel Doyle, Thomas Flanagan, T. W. Freeman, Oliver MacDonagh, R. B. McDowell, Patrick J. O'Farrell, Cormac Ó Gráda, W. E. Vaughan.

Volumes published to date:
II Medieval Ireland 1169-1534
III Early Modern Ireland 1534-1691
IV Eighteenth-Century Ireland 1691-1800
VIII A Chronology of Irish History to 1976
A Companion to Irish History Part I
IX Maps, Genealogies, Lists
A Companion to Irish History Part II