After a slow start, Irish studies of associational culture are beginning to flourish. Hard on the heels of the wide-ranging collection Associational Culture in Ireland and Abroad, edited by Vincent Comerford and Jennifer Kelly (Dublin, 2010), comes this new volume of essays concentrated on the eighteenth century. By comparison to Georgian England, remarkable for its high numbers, diversity, and density of voluntary associations, Ireland lagged well behind—handicapped by its relative low levels of urbanization (except for Dublin, the second city of the British empire and also important on a European scale), agrarian backwardness, poor living standards, and religious divisions. Still, as this volume makes abundantly clear, the country acquired a growing number of clubs and societies, especially from the late eighteenth century, which spread outside Dublin to the main provincial cities like Cork, Limerick, and later Belfast and also to country towns; which recruited not just the elite but the middling and even some of the artisan classes; which attracted mostly Protestants but also some Catholics; and which as in Britain played an important role in Irish social, political, and cultural life by 1800.

In the introduction the editors set out a useful framework for Irish associational history, reminding us of the possible links between clubs and earlier guild and corporate structures in the period, the role of politeness and sociability, the importance of club governance—both democratic and hierarchical—and the significance of multiple club membership. In a second introductory piece, Patrick Walsh investigates the early origins of Irish clubs in the 1680–1730s and notes the precocious arrival of improvement and moral reform societies, political clubs, and trade and professional societies—often modeled on English bodies.

The rest of the book is in four parts, mainly looking at different types of organization. Part 2 focuses on intellectual and improving societies and starts with Toby Barnard’s masterly account of the Dublin Society and other improving societies in 1731–85 that argues that most had troubled and short histories, suffering many typical organizational problems: the survival of the Dublin Society owed most, he claims, to its complementary function to other bodies (although parliamentary grants and the royal charter of 1755 certainly helped). Other pieces in this section include James Kelly on charitable societies (important because of the lack of an English poor law), Lisa Griffiths on commercial clubs such as the later Dublin chamber of commerce, Jennifer Kelly on the specialist and unstable annuity clubs (surprisingly, there were few English-style benefit clubs), and Johanna Archbold’s good survey of book clubs and library societies—the most ubiquitous of all associations (apart from freemasonry) in the English-speaking world—linked in Ireland, as she says, to the dissenting churches but also no doubt as elsewhere to the rise of booksellers who actively promoted them. Ending this section, Michael Brown discusses the Royal Irish Academy, suggesting that it was a modest Irish center of the European Enlightenment (whatever that was) but that pleasure and sociability also ranked high on its members’ agenda (as they still do). Part 3 on political clubs ranges over rather better known territory, although with valuable insights: thus, there are chapters on loyal societies during 1690–1790 (Jacqueline Hill); on pre-Orangist loyalist clubs like the Aldermen of Skinner’s Alley, Dublin (Martyn Powell); patriot clubs of the 1750s (Bob Harris); popular political clubs during 1749–89 (Powell); elite clubs during 1770–1800 (James Kelly); and opposition political clubs during 1790–98 covering the rise and fall of liberal societies in an age of rapid political polarization (Ultán Gillen).

Part 4 turns the spotlight on convivial societies. On freemasonry, one of the most important and best documented of eighteenth-century societies, the excellent Petri Mirala offers a wide-ranging analysis of the movement with some helpful comparisons not just to England but to Europe. One important conclusion is that freemasonry (unlike many other clubs) was open to Catholics (the papal ban was not enforced), and Catholic priests even took part in Masonic events. In 1800, Irish lodges may have had 30,000 members. David Ryan discusses the more exotic but much less important Dublin Hellfire Club (1737–early 1740s); Martyn Powell (again) discusses various convivial clubs and, while stressing their links to coffeehouses and taverns, also points to the way that heavy drinking was tempered by polite conversation and charity; James Kelly (also again) paints the story of the Bar Club, a fashionable Dublin dining club in 1787–93; Martyn Powell shows that hunting clubs were almost as widespread as in England, although in Ireland they were tied to shoring up Protestant dominance in the countryside, sometimes being involved in policing; and James Kelly reports on the growth of horse-racing clubs leading to the creation of a regulatory Jockey Club in the 1750s on the English model—although this was replaced by the Turf Club in the 1780s.

The final part supplies a breath of comparative fresh air after the rather intense analyses of the different associational types, with its chapters on regional and local networks of associations. David Fleming presents a broad-ranging survey of clubs and societies in Munster, including Cork, Limerick, and Waterford, highlighting the local variations, the different types of societies, the extent of rural clubs, the lack of learned societies (compared to England), and the absence of well-off Catholic participants. Fleming attributes the lower associational density in Ireland to a smaller affluent society, slower urbanization, and competition from traditional sociability. More specifically, Allan Blackstock reports on loyal clubs in Ulster in 1770–1800, but Eoin Magennis offers a good general account of the rise of associations in eighteenth-century Belfast—although limited in the first half century, the number of political, philanthropic, commercial, Masonic, and sociable societies was soaring by the 1780s, as the city expanded and prospered.

The book would have benefited from more regional and local studies mapping the range and density of associations but also showing the societal networking. As is indicated in a number of chapters but never fully demonstrated, associational culture in the eighteenth century was a networked culture with societies competing with one another but also forming clusters and discrete circles of sociability. Networking of this kind was documented in detail some years ago by Andrew Dalgleish, “Voluntary Associations and the Middle Class in Edinburgh, 1780–1820” (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 1992). This raises another issue. A great deal of the comparison in this book is with England, but more could have been made of comparative analysis with Scotland and North America—also rapidly acquiring clubs and societies in the late eighteenth century and starting to export associations abroad (by the 1780s, there were multiple and complex associational exchanges). And what about Europe? Although Ireland might seem a laggard by British standards, on a European scale—compared to France or even Germany—its achievements are quite impressive. Was the Irish Catholic Church less of a constraint on Irish associational life than its continental counterparts? A final reservation: rather more could have been said about gender. What did better-off Irish women do with their sociable time in town? Did they go to debating and music societies; were they auxiliaries of philanthropic and religious societies? Or did they focus their attention on visiting, concerts, theater, and assemblies? These questions remind us that despite this and other recent publications, there is yet more work to be done on Irish associational life, so crucial for understanding the country’s development in the eighteenth century. But James Kelly and Martyn Powell can rest happy that they have produced a handsome, well-edited book that will be one of the cornerstones of research on early Irish clubs and societies for many years to come.