 |
The Natural History of Ireland(Hardback - 2009) €39.00 |
Price: €39.00
Add to BagThe Natural History of Ireland by Philip O’Sullivan Beare (c.1590 – 1660) is an important source of the history of Ireland’s natural environment and its political history. It was originally written in Latin by Don Philip O’Sullivan Beara, an Irish nobleman living in exile in Spain, and formed part of his Zoilomastix (1625).
O’Sullivan Beare wrote the Zoilomastix in order to refute the Topographia Hiberniae of Giraldus Cambrensis, which was very derogatory of Ireland and the Irish people. The Topograhia was still the accepted text on Ireland in the seventeenth century which angered Philip O’Sullivan as it contained so many inaccuracies in its description of Ireland. Book One of the Zoilomastix highlights his reaction to these propagandist texts denigrating Ireland and comments on the natural habitat and features, such as rivers, plants, animals, fish and birds, of Ireland. Species listed are named in four languages, including Irish. An introduction by Denis O’Sullivan gives an overall history of the O’Sullivans and Philip in particular.
This book has never been translated into English before, thus making this a unique publication. This translation is both faithful to the original and accessible to the general reader. The ability to deal with a complex, multilingual manuscript of this kind is now rare and it is to the credit of Dr O’Sullivan that this is such a readable edition of the text. This translation constitutes an important contribution to scholarship pertaining to O’Sullivan Beare, early modern Irish Latin literature and Irish history in general and will be of interest to historians of science as well as the broad group of historians of early modern Ireland and the connections with Europe of the time.
Denis C. O’Sullivan was a consultant urologist at Cork University Hospital and the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork and a lecturer in urology at Cork University Hospital. He graduated in Ancient Classics from University College Cork
Hardback: 2009
Printed Pages: 384
Size: 234 x 156mm
ISBN: 9781859184394
Related Products
Book Reviews
Tintean, The Australian Irish Heritage Network
March 8, 2010, 9:13 am
This book took me by surprise: its easy style and its visionary overview of Ireland's rich natural endownments in ancient times held me spellbound. Dr Denis C. O'Sullivan's translation is a landmark contribution to all aspects of Irish scholarship, natural, cultural, and political
Australian Journal of Irish Studies
February 9, 2010, 9:02 am
Wonderful things are happening in Cork. The Centre for Neo-Latin Studies and Renaissance Latin Texts of Ireland project in University College Cork, directed by Keith Sidwell, has since 1999 been steadily unearthing, examining, publishing (so far on the web) and sometimes translating many of the more than 1000 printed works and equivalent number of manuscripts in Latin estimated to have been written between 1500 and 1750 by more than 300 Irish authors. Don Philip O’Sullivan Beare (1590–1636), best known for his propagandistic Historiae Catholicae Hiberniae Compendium (Lisbon 1621), is one of the chief authors in this pantheon and The Natural History of Ireland, suitably, represents the ‘first of (we hope) a very large number of such translations (some with Latin text) which will appear in various places over the next few years’ (Sidwell, ‘Foreword’ p. 8). This edition both translates into English and publishes entirely for the first time the first part of a long, unfinished fragment of a difficult manuscript, the Zoilomastix (‘Scourge of Zoilos’), completed c.1626 and lost to the ages until its discovery in the University of Uppsala in 1932. This edition,with its facing translations is clearly written, well-annotated and wellindexed in an attractively produced volume, and so represents a tremendous boon to the scholarship of early modern Ireland.
Sherkin Comment
December 7, 2009, 11:09 am
Here indeed is a book to enjoy and one packed with tantalizing nuggets of information that fire the imagination.
Books Ireland
November 27, 2009, 16:09 pm
This is one of the most impressive studies to have landed on my desk for a long time.
Colm Lennon, Irish Arts Review
November 17, 2009, 8:30 am
Denis C O'Sullivan's scholarship shines through in his meticulous identification of the bewildering diversity of birds and beasts through their Greek, Latin, Spanish and Irish names and his rendition of them in their modern form. He has succeeded in editing sensitively a difficult manuscript and producing a lucid and fascinating translation of the work of one who, besides being a political polemicist, was something of a Linnaean avant la lettre.
Nicky Furlong, Wexford Echo
July 30, 2009, 12:49 pm
This is an exceptional book in conception, challenge and execution. Of the author we can submit no less.
Mary Leland, Irish Examiner
July 27, 2009, 15:37 pm
What is to be found here is a journey through Ireland, but travelling with an erudite and highly entertaining companion.
Frank Hanover (Southern Star)
June 30, 2009, 10:46 am
Essentially The Natural History of Ireland is a natural gift of colloquial and assiduous natural history set against an upheaval no less remarkable than it is definitive. It's a valuable resource the accomplishment of which is a credit both to the publisher's commissioning policy and the devotional as well as consistent consideration of its bespoke editor and translator, Denis C. O'Sullivan.
Richard Collins (broadcaster and naturalist)
June 24, 2009, 8:53 am
It is a tantalizing book
Eanna ní Lamhna (broadcaster, botanist and entomologist)
June 24, 2009, 8:51 am
This book is for people who are dying to know the missing link, we only had Gerald of Wales and material written in the 1700s when scientists began properly. I have enjoyed it enormously.
