Introduction

This book describes an informal system of education in late eighteenth-century Ireland, a system that operated without funding or direction by the church or state and that emerged long before the Irish national system was instituted in 1831. Between the founding of the Hibernian Academy in 1759 and the 1800 Act of Union, this system emerged primarily in Dublin and was characterized by a widely accepted modern curriculum, an expansion in the number, variety, and interconnectedness of schools, a more public visibility of these schools in print, and a more self-conscious and professionalized class of educators.