Ireland under the Normans, 1169–1333

Goddard Henry Orpen

' … Do not on any account bring this book on a train journey, because you’ll miss your station. Everyone who has any interest whatsoever in Irish history should read this and keep it in the house. A wonderful book’, Lucille Redmond, Books Ireland.

'Goddard Henry Orpen's four-volume study Ireland under the Normans offers so many insights into the Weltanschauung of its author and his class that it is rewarding of study for this purpose alone. But it would be a dreadful shame if sight was lost of the fact that his work is a work of quite the most stupendous scholarship. Every monograph which has since appeared on this era of Irish history has paraphrased him, adjusted some of the minutiae of his account, added some details where a new source has been unearthed, or sought to tell the same story in a different tone. His work has not been surpassed, and it cannot be supersceded, because it is the fons et origo of the professional historiography of Anglo-Norman Ireland', Dr Seán Duffy.

'No academic library should be without it', Brendan Bradshaw, Irish Economic and Social History (2007).

‘Four Courts Press is to be congratulated on its decision to make available in a single volume Orpen’s marvellous Ireland under the Normans … the work is indispensible to any student of the period of Irish history that it covers … Seán Duffy’s excellent introduction provides just the right amount of historical context to allow an appreciation of the way Orpen’s background and concerns influenced his approach to his subject … a work of extraordinary scholarship and fundamental importance in its field', Brendan Smith, Peritia (2008).

‘… with a superb new introduction by Sean Duffy … Make no mistake: Orpen is not an author who can be overlooked. His comfort with a stupendous array of sources, his obsessive level of detail, and his vivid style make this unwieldy work both readable and informative … The level of detail in each account is a testament to Orpen's comfort with sources ranging from Irish annals to justiciary rolls … It's great to have this old warhorse of a history available to libraries that were unable to purchase the original, and it should be included in any library that is committed to providing any Irish history for its users’, Linda E. Mitchell, The Medieval Review.