This pioneering study of the material culture of Stuart and Hanoverian Ireland reveals unsuspected richness and diversity of lifestyle, habitat, and mentality. Like its highly praised predecessor, A New Anatomy of Ireland, it abounds with quirky people and vivid scenes and is a striking reappraisal of Ireland under the Protestant Ascendancy.

The book ranges from the governing elite of Dublin Castle to Dublin itself, to provincial towns and the countryside beyond, and even to the Irish in Britain and Europe. Toby Barnard describes varied buildings, gardens, pictures, and belongings, showing how possessions highlighted and widened divisions between rich and poor, women and men, Irish Catholics and Protestant settlers. The book allows Ireland for the first time to be integrated into discussions of the pleasures and pains of consumerism.