Author: Angela Bourke
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446412326
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 253
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Book Description
In 1895 twenty-six-year-old Bridget Cleary disappeared from her house in rural Tipperary. At first, some said that the fairies had taken her into their stronghold in a nearby hill, from where she would emerge, riding a white horse. But then her badly burned body was found in a shallow grave. Her husband, father, aunt and four cousins were arrested and charged, while newspapers in nearby Clonmel, and then in Dublin, Cork, London and further afield attempted to make sense of what had happened. In this lurid and fascinating episode, set in the last decade of the nineteenth century, we witness the collision of town and country, of storytelling and science, of old and new. The torture and burning of Bridget Cleary caused a sensation in 1895 which continues to reverberate more than a hundred years later. Winner of the Irish Times Prize for Non-Fiction
Author: Angela Bourke
Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
Recounts the March 1895 murder of 26-year-old Bridget Cleary in rural Ireland, the trial of her husband and family, the extensive media coverage, and the politicization of the crime
Author: Joan Hoff
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0465012086
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 323
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Book Description
On March 15, 1895, twenty-eight year old Bridget Cleary, a cooper's wife, disappeared from her cottage in rural County Tipperary. Immediately, strange and lurid rumors began circulating the neighborhood about what had happened. Some said she ran off with an egg seller; others supposed it was an aristocratic foxhunter who had taken young Bridget away. Swirling amid rumors was the barely whispered, but widely held, belief that Bridget had gone with no mortal man; rather, she had gone off with the fairies. The mystery deepened when seven days later her body was discovered, bent, broken and badly burned in a shallow grave. Within a few days, the unimaginable truth came to light: for almost a week before her death Bridget had been confined, ritually starved, threatened, physically and verbally abused, exorcised, and, finally, burned to death by her husband, Michael Cleary, her father, and extended family who confused bronchitis with a "fairy dart." They had all become convinced that "their Bridgie" had been taken from them and her fairy-possessed body left behind to deceive them. In The Cooper's Wife Is Missing, Joan Hoff and Marian Yeates make sense of this ancient, rarely publicized, ritual exorcism and explain how the incident went on to become a national and international incident. Set against a backdrop of renewed Irish nationalism, a Church crackdown on lingering pagan practices and the ongoing British humiliation of Catholic Ireland, the authors deftly map the dislocating anxieties that beset the rural peasantry in late nineteenth-century Ireland. Bewildered and frightened by the changes occurring all around them, pulled in all directions by their politicians, priests, landlords and English overlords, the Clearys were not alone in retreating to the relative comfort of pagan ritual. Drawing on first-hand accounts, contemporary newspaper reports, police records, trial testimony and a rich wealth of folklore, the authors weave a mesmerizing tale that touches upon magic, madness and mystery as it details, day by day, Bridget's ordeal and the resulting investigation. This is narrative history at its evocative best. It fascinates as it illuminates.
Author: Andrew Tierney
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241979102
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
A mysterious death in respectable society: a brilliant historical true crime story In 1849, a woman called Ellen Langley died in Nenagh, Co. Tipperary. She was the wife of a prosperous local doctor. So why was she buried in a pauper's coffin? Why had she been confined to the grim attic of the house she shared with her husband, and then exiled to a rented dwelling-room in an impoverished part of the famine-ravaged town? And why was her husband charged with murder? Following every twist and turn of the inquest into Ellen Langley's death and the trial of her husband, The Doctor's Wife is Dead tells the story of an unhappy marriage, of a man's confidence that he could get away with abusing his wife, and of the brave efforts of a number of ordinary citizens to hold him to account. Andrew Tierney has produced a tour de force of narrative nonfiction that shines a light on the double standards of Victorian law and morality and illuminates the weave of money, sex, ambition and respectability that defined the possibilities and limitations of married life. It is a gripping portrait of a marriage, a society and a shocking legal drama. 'An astonishing book ... a vivid chronicle of the unspeakable cruelty perpetrated by a husband on his spouse at a time when, in law, a wife was a man's chattel' Damian Corless, Irish Independent 'Opens in gripping style and rarely falters ... fascinating and well researched' Mary Carr, Irish Mail on Sunday (5 stars) 'Truly illuminating ... Tierney's exploration of the case's influence on Irish and English lawmaking and literature is particularly intriguing, drawing comparisons with Kate Summerscale's similar work in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher' Jessica Traynor, Sunday Times 'Riveting ... meticulously researched and deftly told' Irish Examiner 'A nonfiction work with the pulse of a courtroom drama ... Tierney's book is a moving account of Ellen Langley's squalid last days, but it's also a study of Famine-era Irish society. Men dominate, be they grimly professional gents in tall hats and grey waistcoats or feckless scoundrels using women as chattel' Peter Murphy, Irish Times 'A dark tale of spousal abuse, illicit sex and uncertain justice, set against a backdrop of poverty and privilege, marital inequality and the deep religious divide between Catholics and Protestants. Tierney is an archaeologist, and his skill in unearthing the past is on display as he digs deep into the historical record of a murder case so shocking and controversial that it was debated in parliament. ... Tierney writes with passion ... and deftly weaves a plot that's filled with surprising twists and turns' History Ireland
Author: Padraig O'Malley
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 9780807002094
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
"In an eloquent and haunting book, O'Malley makes the fanaticism of [the hunger strikers] and their supporters, the obdurate and morally discredited tactics of the British Government and the hopeless combat of the Protestant and Roman Catholic factions in the Northern Ireland struggle explicable, and exposes the politics behind it."--The New York Times Book Review
Author: Angela Bourke
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 180
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Book Description
Bourke's stories have been published in Ireland and the U. S. She writes with great delicacy and skill, and won the Frank O'Connnor Award for Short Fiction in 1992. In this memorable collection the salt wateris not only the sea, but tears, sweat, a
Author: Daphne Berdahl
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520214765
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310
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Book Description
Focusing on the re-unification of Germany, this text asks what happens when a political and economic system collapses overnight. It concentrates especially on how these changes have affected certain "border zones" of daily life - including social organization, gender and religion.
Author: Translated from the Irish By Dr Douglas Hyde
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1613109288
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 21
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Book Description
Author: Proal Heartwell
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498270565
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 162
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Book Description
Goronwy Owen (1723-1769) was a Welsh poet and clergyman who spent the last dozen years of his life in Virginia. As a poet, Owen is still revered in his native land as in his work he revived the ancient bardic meters of Welsh poetry. He lived in obscurity in Virginia, first in Williamsburg where he was the Master of the Grammar School at the College of William and Mary, and then in Brunswick County where he was the rector of St. Andrew's Parish. In Brunswick County, Owen wrote "Marwnad Lewys Morys Yswain," widely considered his second greatest poem. Goronwy and Me: A Narrative of Two Lives traces Owen's tempestuous life from his humble beginnings in Wales to his last years in Virginia. Throughout the narrative, Proal Heartwell explores the many intersections between his own life and that of the exiled bard. Goronwy and Me is not a typical biography, but rather a conversation between the author and the reader on the life of a remarkable Welshman.
Author: Nathan Belofsky
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399159959
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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Book Description
Strange Medicine casts a gimlet eye on the practice of medicine through the ages that highlights the most dubious ideas, bizarre treatments, and biggest blunders. From bad science and oafish behavior to stomach-turning procedures that hurt more than helped, Strange Medicine presents strange but true facts and an honor roll of doctors, scientists, and dreamers who inadvertently turned the clock of medicine backward: • The ancient Egyptians applied electric eels to cure gout. • Medieval dentists burned candles in patients’ mouths to kill invisible worms gnawing at their teeth. • Renaissance physicians timed surgical procedures according to the position of the stars, and instructed epileptics to collect fresh blood from the newly beheaded. • Dr. Walter Freeman, the world’s foremost practitioner of lobotomies, practiced his craft while traveling on family camping trips, cramming the back of the station wagon with kids—and surgical tools—then hammering ice picks into the eye sockets of his patients in between hikes in the woods. Strange Medicine is an illuminating panorama of medical history as you’ve never seen it before.
