The middle class of Callan, Co. Kilkenny, 1825–45

Pierce Grace

‘[Grace’s] documenting of this group, and public and private lives, is a superb piece of social history derived from census data, local newspapers and the diary of one member of the Callan middle class, Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin’, Family & Community History (October 2016). 


‘The Maynooth Studies in Local History are one of the most significant publishing achievements in Irish History in the past quarter century … they are a triumphant demonstration of the value of the local approach [and] are illustrative, individually and severally, of the exemplary potential of the micro-study, and of the illuminative and illustrative quality of an approach that not just accommodates but provides a raison d’etre for a form of history that celebrates the diversity that underlies every generalisation that historians aspire to reach’, James Kelly, Studia Hibernica (2014).


‘The Maynooth Studies in Local History have brought about a quiet revolution in Irish local studies, and have changed the larger landscape too. Working from fascinating and little-known sources, and mobilizing the resources of energetic and imaginative scholarship, an extraordinary range of subjects has been identified, illuminated, and brought into focus. These 100 publications not only explore little-known local episodes and phenomena; they constitute a major contribution to the mainstream of Irish history’, R.F. Foster, Hertford College, Oxford.