A GENERAL HISTORY OF IRELAND FROM THE EARLIEST ACCOUNTS TO THE CLOSE OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY, COLLECTED FROM THE MOST AUTHENTIC RECORDS. IN WHICH NEW AND INTERESTING LIGHTS ARE THROWN ON THE REMOPTE HISTORIES OF OTHER NATIONS AS WELL AS OF BOTH BRITAINS (TWO VOLUMES)

London, England: A. Hamilton, 1778. First Edition. Leather-bound. Very Good. Matching set of two volumes: Quarto, 10.9 in. x 9 in. Contemporary full calf with thin gilt frame to boards. Gilt title to black and burgundy panels, and many decorative gilt bandlines, to rebacked spine. Rubbing and scuffing to boards. Bottom corners nudged. Previous owner's bookplates to front pastedown. Volume I: pp. xv, i - lvi, 307, [12] (index). List of 469 subscribers. Light spotting to preliminary pages. Open tear to bottom of page i (does not impact text). Volume II: pp. 416, [11] (index). Light spotting to half title and title page. Bookplates read: "Ex-libris Ramsgate Monasterii St. Augustine", a fiomer Benedictine Abbey located in Kent, UK.

Sylvester O'Halloran (1728-1807) was a surgeon and antiquarian in Limerick, Ireand. He was an expert in the diseases of the eyes and head injuries, and was a chief supporter of the literary society in Limerick.

"O'Halloran's interest in the arts began with his collection of Gaelic poetry manuscripts and this led to an interest in Irish history. From the early 1760s he became embroiled in a heated dispute over the validity and importance of pre-Norman Irish History, which many of the contemporary chroniclers had dismissed as a period of barbarism. Beginning with a public plea in 1763 to preserve the Irish Annals and a refutation of MacPherson's Ossian; Insula Sacra (1770) he went on to publish An introduction to the study of the Antiquities of Ireland (1770). In response to Thomas Leland's conservative History of Ireland (1773) he published his Ierne Defended (1774), which asserted the value of Irish manuscripts and continued his defence of pre-Norman Irish civilization with his A General History of Ireland (1774/5), which forms the first half of this publication. Criticised in his own lifetime for being too sympathetic towards Gaelic Ireland, O'Halloran was immortalised shortly after his death (1807) in Maria Edgeworth's The Absentee, as the character of Count O'Halloran the 'tall thin doctor in his quaint French dress with his goldheaded cane, beautiful Parisian wig and cocked hat'. O'Halloran's History of Ireland down to 1171 coupled with William Dolby's History of Ireland from Henry II to the end of the 1840s is a monumental defence of Irish history and culture and one that should not be missed by anyone interested in Irish history and historiography, the first part of which rightly takes it place as one of the first refutations of Anglo-centric view of Ireland." (from Irish Family History Center).