The Lost World of Stephen Gwynn

This is one of those books that makes one wonder how on earth its subject escaped scholarly attention before its publication. Stephen Gwynn was one of the most intriguing men of his era. He was one of those people who seemed to know everybody who was worth knowing and to have found himself at the heart of almost all the crucial political and intellectual debates in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ireland. As a prolific essayist, biographer and critic, Gwynn had plenty to say about these debates. As a nationalist MP from 1906 to 1918, he lived through them, a perceptive witness to the radicalisation of Irish politics which shattered the expectations of constitutional nationalists and relegated their political and intellectual contexts to near historiographical obscurity. A perceptive and sympathetic biographer, Colin Reid has provided us with a fascinating study of an important subject in his own right, as well as an astute analysis of the ‘lost Ireland’ of Gwynn and his fellow constitutional nationalists. One of the great strengths of this book is the balance the author maintains between the life and the times of Gwynn. The man and his world are excavated with equal skill and sensitivity, producing an insightful and valuable portrait of an era

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