Brian Ward presents an analysis of the output of twelve Irish publications from 1912 in this book. These are four periodicals – Studies, Irish Homestead, Catholic Bulletin, and Irish Review – and eight weekly newspapers: D. P. Moran's Leader, the Irish Citizen, Irish Worker, Carlow Sentinel, Derry Journal, Galway Express, Nenagh Guardian, and Ulster Gazette. Ward notes that ‘For reasons of brevity all daily newspapers have been set aside’ (p. 14).
The book applies a thematic approach to the study of 1912 Ireland. Entitled ‘A vigilant nation’, chapter one tackles a range of issues centring on Catholic crusades against immoral literature and suffrage. The other three chapters explore ‘sport and masculinity’, ‘musical expressions of community and conflict’, and ‘a fragmented literary revival’. The purpose of the book is ‘to uncover and explore different social, cultural and literary conceptions of Ireland based around the promise of a home rule government, and to assess how this was presented by the Irish press of 1912’ (p. 12).
Further aims are outlined across the 43-page introduction including considerations of colonial representation, imperialism, and attempts at imagining ‘authentic Irish culture’ (p. 50). The imagined ‘alternative Irelands’ of the title are elusive at times. Several articles published in the twelve selected titles discuss Ireland's future but go unmentioned. Tom Kettle's ‘The future of private property’ (Studies, March 1912) and Francis Cruise O'Brien's ‘Home rule: and after’ (Irish Review, February 1912) are prominent omissions.
The book's conclusion informs us that ‘nationalist rhetoric for decades after the creation of the Free State … reproduce[ed] the hermetic seal initially placed around Irish culture by the Gaelic League’ (p. 206). However, Ward states that ‘Irish-language periodicals such as [An] Claidheamh Soluis are excluded, as this work is restricted to English-language output only, and the views of the Gaelic League have been explored in great detail for decades’ (p. 14). The author ignores the fact that one of his central texts, the Irish Review, was partially bi-lingual. Nothing is said of either the poetry or prose in Irish which featured prominently in the Irish Review in 1912. This includes the work of P. H. Pearse, Pádraic Ó Conaire, and Seán Ó Murthuile.
A central character in this book is D. P. Moran. While Patrick Maume's Long gestation is cited, neither Maume's biography of Moran nor his 2006 introduction to Moran's Philosophy of Irish-Ireland are mentioned. Students of Irish history have recently been reminded that ‘[Moran's] religious sectarianism and endorsement of petite bourgeois values were in some way prophetic of the post-revolutionary future.’ This analysis would sit well within Ward's thesis, but it comes from R. F. Foster's Vivid faces, a book which, like the rest of Foster's oeuvre, receives no mention.
Indispensable historians of this period including Lauren Arrington, Ronan Fanning, A. C. Hepburn, Alvin Jackson, F. S. L. Lyons and Senia Pašeta do not feature. The discussion of suffrage lacks any mention of the works of Senia Pašeta, Rosemary Cullen Owens or Louise Ryan, and references only one article by Margaret Ward. James McConnel's The Irish Parliamentary Party and the third home rule crisis (Dublin, 2013) receives no mention despite the fact that it includes a chapter on ‘Imagining home rule’. Virginia Glandon and Michael Wheatley have made landmark contributions to the history of newspapers in this period but receive no mention. The book takes a minimalist approach to archival sources. In examining violence and vigilance for instance, police reports, the Chief Secretary's Office registered papers, and diocesan archives could have added welcome depth to the author's insights.
The author's skills in literary criticism shine through in his examination of two works by British born authors in the Irish Review: Arnold Bax [pseud. Dermot O'Byrne] and Miriam Alexander. While the textual analysis of her prose is excellent, ‘very little’, we are told, ‘is known about Alexander, who later wrote as Mrs Harold Stokes’. Ward speculates that ‘[her] name might have been a pseudonym inspired by her time attending [Alexandra College]’ (p. 186). A quick check of census and newspaper records shows Miriam Alexander may have lied about her age (21 in 1901 but only 27 by 1911) but she most definitely existed. That she later published under the name Mrs Harold Stokes is unsurprisingly the outcome of her marriage in 1914 to Captain Stokes, A.S.C.
In the context of ‘sport and masculinity’, it would have been interesting to see analysis of trends which fly in the face the homosocial sporting and recreational activities which are front and centre in Ward's vision of sport in 1912. For instance, apart from one fleeting reference, Ward misses the opportunity to discuss the craze for roller-skating which seems to have peaked around 1912. Regarding ‘Irish insularity’, again it seems as if conflicting evidence has been skipped over; notably P. J. Sheridan's ‘The renaissance of Alsace-Lorraine’, Gerald Festus Kelly's Gauguinesque ‘Burmese girl’ print, or Lucien Wolf's ‘The legal sufferings of the Jews in Russia’, all of which featured in the Irish Review in 1912.
Several minor but regrettable errors pepper the text: Augustine Birrell was chief secretary of Ireland, not ‘First Secretary’; Francis Cruise O'Brien mysteriously becomes his son, Conor, in the index; ‘Churchill’ is given no forename in the text but is ‘William’ in the index; and author Malcolm Ballin becomes ‘Michael’ on p. 13. Generally, the book is elegantly written and certain sections in the analysis of sport, music, and especially literature offer interesting new insights. However, from the historian's perspective, the lack of engagement with both archives and key works of historical scholarship leave one feeling that more satisfactory approaches might have been adopted in realising what the book sets out to achieve.
