For more than forty years Emmet Larkin has traced the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland in the long nineteenth century. In an early series of important articles, and subsequently seven volumes covering in exhaustive detail the period 1850–91, Larkin has revolutionised our understanding of that Church, its structures, personnel, rivalries, customs, limitations, power and overwhelming influence on Irish society. More in the series are promised, taking the story backwards to 1780, and forward to 1918. The present work, the twelfth of a projected thirteen volumes, is the first to depart from the rigidly chronological and instead address a thematic issue of overarching importance. Behind this is Larkin's influential thesis that in the nineteenth century Ireland experienced a ‘devotional revolution’, starting in earnest from about 1850. This volume implicitly answers a number of critics who, while largely agreeing that such a revolution took place, have challenged its timing, origins or effects. The question Larkin sets himself is how the Catholic Church went about meeting the pastoral needs of the Irish Catholic population before the Famine. To do so, over four chapters Larkin provides both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the Irish clergy, as well as an examination of chapel provision in the period and an account of the rise of the uniquely Irish custom of ‘Stations’ (the practice whereby twice a year – around Christmas and Easter – priests heard confessions and said mass in a series of private homes, while simultaneously collecting their dues). Larkin identifies a number of crucial challenges that the Church faced as it emerged from the full rigour of the anti-Catholic penal laws. These were primarily economic and demographic, albeit exacerbated by a rather spectacular papal own-goal. From 1742 Rome achieved what the British state had not: a radical reduction in the number of Catholic priests in Ireland. This decision was based on a false belief – which Larkin does much to explain – that Ireland was oversupplied with clerics. This had profound consequences, as from about 1750 Ireland experienced a massive and enduring expansion of its Catholic population. By 1840 there were some 2,750 Catholics per priest. In France, the ratio was 800:1. Such a situation obviously had profound consequences for the practice of the Catholic faith in Ireland. Given the overwhelming scale of the challenge, the Irish Church responded well. From about 1770 down to 1845, it enjoyed an increase of some 1,000 priests (once Roman restrictions were lifted) and some 2,000 chapels. The Church also both solidified its administrative structures and largely gained control of what had been an ignorant, factious and often immoral clergy. These achievements form an important part of the book, as do Ireland's ever-present regional variations. Compensating for the shortage of personnel and sacred space was ‘Stations’ which was, Larkin convincingly argues, ‘the most interesting and important practice to emerge in pre-Famine Ireland’ (p. 189). Despite their evidently non-Tridentine character, ‘Stations’ preserved the core of Catholic faith in Ireland against heavy odds. But not for all social classes. Larkin makes the important point that while by 1834 there was space (and priests) for approximately 3·4 million of Ireland's 6·5 million Catholics to attend mass on Sunday, only some 2·8 million did so. Those that did were largely tenant farmers, their families and urban relatives – the very class that Larkin has elsewhere identified as crucial to the formation of the modern Irish nation. The largely poor balance of the population was content with an attenuated practice focused on fulfilling the ‘Easter duty’ of annual confession and communion. Despite very real improvements, Larkin convincingly argues that the ‘Church was still unable on the eve of the Famine to provide adequate pastoral care for the bulk of the Catholic community’ (p. 5). That calamity swept away an older religious order and paved the way for the ‘devotional revolution’ which followed – no doubt the subject of volume xiii of Larkin's history of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. Like its predecessors, the present work is based on an unparalleled knowledge and careful analysis of the surviving archival evidence. It will be required reading for all those interested in the history – and not just the ecclesiastical history – of modern Ireland.