Irish Elites in the Nineteenth Century

Book excerpt: This collection challenges the view that national identification or religious affiliation provided such a strong focus in the lives of individuals as to render unimportant ties, such as those of geography, class, social background, or sectional interest. Power, wealth, and influence were distributed in myriad ways in the 19th century, and often through localized elites or social networks. County clubs, old school networks, and voluntary and charitable organizations appeared throughout the century, vying for the attention of the established elite and the rising middle classes, alongside political parties, freemasonry, and sports and social clubs. Aspirational behavior was evident at many levels of society and affected Irish men and women of all religious backgrounds. Contents include: architectures of gentility in 19th-century Ireland * building Victorian Dublin: Meade & Son and the expansion of the city * elites, ritual, and the legitimation of power on an Irish landed estate, 1855-1890 * elite women as household managers in late 19th-century Ireland * solicitors as elites in mid-19th-century Irish landed society * elites in politics and journalism in Ireland, 1870-1918 * influence of book club members on Belfast's civic identity in the 19th century * the Big House at play: archery as an elite pursuit from the 1830s to the 1870s * Lady Gregory's fans: the Irish Protestant landed class and negotiations of power * the emergence of an Irish middle class in 19th-century Manchester * Irish tourists and the definition of a national elite * a new role for Irish Anglicans in the later 19th century * visual parody and political commentary: John Doyle and Daniel O'Connell * Jeremiah Jordan, Methodist and Nationalist MP * the Irish revival, elite competition, and the First World War (Series: Nineteenth-Century Ireland)