Converts and conversion in Ireland, 1650–1850

Michael Brown, Charles I. McGrath & Thomas P. Power, editors

‘This is a well-reasoned, wonderfully documented and beautifully produced volume. It would be a pity if only specialists read it, for in its historical arguments as much as in its historical narratives this book makes a notable contribution to the study of early-modern religion from an angle that has largely been overlooked', Paul Friesen, Toronto Journal of Theology (Winter 2010).

'Written in a clear and eminently readable style ... has much to say to us in our new century’, Dublin Historical Record.

'The essays present a wide spectrum of motivations, experiences and consequences of conversions … This is certainly a first step to fully explore the disparate religious experience of individuals, families and communities within Ireland', Archiv Fur Reformationsgeschichte (2007).

'This volume goes some way towards breaking the shackles of the confessionally polarised model that still governs the study of history, and especially religious history, in early modern Ireland', Michael David Finnegan, Wiener Zeitschrift zur Geschichte der Neuzeit.

'This is a book which will make you think again about the question of conversion … The authors and the editors are to be congratulated on a finely written and produced volume of essays which goes a long way to explain a lesser-known area of Irish religious history', Eoin Magennis, The Anglican & Episcopal History Journal (Sept. 2007).

‘On the whole, this collection of essays represents a very substantial accession to the literature of religious conversion in Ireland. The merits of the essays themselves aside, the sheer volume of source material identified and cited deserves mention; it will be valuable to future researchers in the field of conversion, while the lists appended to several of the essays are especially convenient’, John Bergin, Eighteenth-Century Ireland (2006).

'Converts and Conversion in Ireland, 1650–1850 provides a fascinating insight into this most contentious of subjects—religious conversion ... Undoubtedly, this important collection of essays addresses a fundamental, if under-examined, aspect of the Irish historical experience: the vexed subject of conversion', Michael Merrigan, Ireland's Genealogical Gazette (April 2009).