Irish women and the creation of modern Catholicism, 1850-1950

This is the first book-length study to investigate the place of lay Catholic women in modern Irish history. It analyses the intersections of gender, class and religion by exploring the roles that middle-class, working-class and rural poor women played in the evolution of Irish Catholicism and thus the creation of modern Irish identities. The book demonstrates that in an age of Church growth and renewal, stretching from the aftermath of the Great Famine through the Free State years, lay wome...