This innovative collection of essays views Irish culture from the eighteenth century to the present day, covering a wide range of topics and authors. Among the writers are Bishop Berkeley, Thomas Moore, Oliver Goldsmith, Francis Hutcheson, Laurence Sterne, Richard Steele, Edmund Burke, Maria Edgeworth, W. B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, James Stephens, Charles Lever, Austin Clarke, Kate O'Brien and Francis Stuart. Also included are a number of neglected Irish writers such as William Dunkin, John Toland, Frederick Ryan, "Father Prout," William McGinn, Shan Bullock, Canon Sheehan and George Birmingham.

The topics range from eighteenth-century satire and sentimentalism to the modern Irish novel, the carnivalesque in early nineteenth-century Cork to the philosophy of Tolan and Berkeley. In moving from celebrated reputations to lesser known writers, the book also breaches the boundaries between literary criticism, intellectual and political history. It concludes with a vigorous intervention into the ongoing debate surrounding revisionism in Irish Studies.