An Illustrated History of Ireland. From the Earliest Period. With Historical Illustrations by Henry Doyle. Kenmare: Irish National Publications, 1876. Pp 670, [2]. Publisher’s green cloth boards lettered & decorated in gilt. Scuffing to inner hinge of upper cover, otherwise a nice bright copy.

Folded frontispiece map of Noble Erin Island of Kings, with two additional folding maps at rear, one showing the population from the Census of 1841 and 1861 the other the religious breakdown of the Counties. Twelve plates by Henry Doyle in the text. 

Mary Francis Cusack (1832-1899) also known as The Nun of Kenmare was a Catholic convert and founder of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. A prolific author and Irish nationalist her history is unapologetically partisan. In her prefaces, she argues that Irish history had been deliberately excluded from national schools to keep the Irish ignorant of their own past, and she intended the book as a corrective: a text that would instil pride rather than shame, and that ought to be “in the hands of every young student and of every young Irish maiden“.