Several new books, with Church of Ireland associations have recently appeared which might entertain and edify those in search of some holiday reading, writes The Irish Times C of I correspondent
The Bicentenary Book: From the Kildare Place Society to the Church of Ireland College of Education, 1811-2011, edited by Valerie Coghlan, the CITC Librarian, marks the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Kildare Place Society in Dublin in 1811.
The Church of Ireland Training College and its successor the Church of Ireland College of Education have their origins in the teacher training begun by the Kildare Place Society. The twenty-two articles in the new publication vary in length and tone, but together chart the changing times of one of Ireland’s oldest educational institutions. Contributors include two past principals, Dr Kenneth Milne and Sydney Blain, and other past and present staff and students recall life in Kildare Place and on the Rathmines campus.
The volume is remarkable for the quality of the photographs – the vast majority in colour, with some evocative, early black and whites, and these together with the feature articles make the Bicentenary Book ‘a must have’ for anybody with any association with the college.
The book is available from CICE Publications, the Church of Ireland College of Education, Upper Rathmines Road, Dublin 6, Ireland for €25 (+ €3p&p).
Letters from abroad: the Grand Tour correspondence of Richard Pococke & Jeremiah Miles is an edition of the previously unpublished Grand Tour correspondence of Richard Pococke, later Bishop of Ossory, and his cousin Jeremiah Miles, later Dean of Exeter. Their travels are recorded in an extensive collection of letters from Pococke to his mother who lived in Highclere near Southampton, and from both cousins to their uncle, Thomas Miles, Bishop of Waterford & Lismore. This, the first volume of correspondence, covers the years 1733 to 1734 and includes biographies not only of he authors of the letters but also the recipients. The edition has been prepared by Dr Rachel Finnegan from Waterford IT and has been published by the Pococke Press.
Another Waterford author, Dr Frances Finnegan, formerly Lecturer in Social History in WIT, has produced a volume on Dorothea Herbert, daughter of the Revd Nicholas Herbert, Rector of Carrick-on-Suir & Knockgraffon, Co. Tipperary. Introspections: the poetry & private world of Dorothea Herbert has been published by Congrave Press at €20. This volume contains the lost poetry of Dorothea Herbert and her unpublished journal which is a continuation of her famous Reflections written in about 1806 and first published in 1929-30