This past summer Four Courts Press published The Politics of Dublin Corporation, 1840-1900: from Reform to Expansion by James H Murphy, the Irish Studies Program’s previous director. Dublin Corporation, the city’s council, was an ancient and prestigious body. In 1840 its system of voting was reformed to allow for more representation by Catholics, and in 1841, Daniel O’Connell was elected its Lord Mayor. At the end of the century the boundaries of the city were significantly extended. The intervening sixty years saw the corporation struggle to find a role for itself. This book explores the story of the Dublin Corporation for the first time, focusing on the visions and conflicts of its members.
Professor Murphy is the author of numerous articles and chapters and the editor of nine collections, including the nineteenth-century volume of the Oxford History of the Irish Book. The Politics of Dublin Corporation, 1840-1900 is his sixth monograph. His principal areas of research are political history and the history of fiction in the nineteenth century. Murphy’s publications seek to interpret nineteenth-century Ireland in terms close to those which people at the time might have recognized rather than through the lenses of later perspectives