Informal Education in Eighteenth-Century Ireland

This book documents an informal system of education that emerged in Ireland between the late 1750s and the end of the century, a system that operated largely without funding or direction by church or state. In a society as divided as eighteenth-century Ireland, it is remarkable that such a system could succeed, paving the way for the more formal reforms of Irish education that followed in the nineteenth century. Based on detailed evidence from newspaper advertisements, directories, educational prospectuses, textbooks, and other print documents from the period as well as previously unexamined manuscript resources, the author describes this system and how it functioned, emphasizing the transnational dimensions of print culture, English literature, and education reform.

1. Introduction.- 2. Those Who Can’t Teach Write Dictionaries: Approaches to Reform, 1755-1758.- 3. Competition in Print, 1759-1800.- 4. Exploiting Print Resources: Samuel Whyte’s English Grammar School, 1759-1811.- 5. Prospectuses, Poems, and Playbills: Establishing Social Networks.- 6. Reading and Speaking with Distinction: English at the Core.- 7. “Teaching English Grammatically” in Catholic Schools and Female Boarding Schools, 1782-1800.- 8. The Professionalization of “Literary Teachers,” 1788-1800.- 9. Conclusion: An Informal System of Education.

M. Wade Mahon is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, USA, where he teaches Rhetorical Theory, British Literature, and Creative Nonfiction. His research focuses on eighteenth-century Irish education, poetry, and rhetorical theory. He has published in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, The Eighteenth-Century: Theory and Interpretation, and Archivium Hibernicum.