Research Guides: Irish Studies Research Guide: Primary and Archival Sources

Rose Library Special Collections

The Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University has extensive book and manuscript holdings documenting the Irish literary revival and 20th century British and Irish poetry.

Below are highlights and curated lists from Emory's Irish holdings in special collections:

Emory University is also home to the Letters of Samuel Beckett project, an interactive index in which you can find data on all Beckett letters held in public archives.

Full Text Databases

British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
British and Irish Women’s Letters and Diaries spans more than 400 years of personal writings, bringing together the voices of women from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Complementing Alexander Street’s North American Women's Letters and Diaries, the database lets researchers view history in the context of women’s thoughts—their struggles, achievements, passions, pursuits, and desires.

CELT: the Corpus of Electronic Texts
CELT, the Corpus of Electronic Texts, is Ireland's longest running Humanities Computing project. It brings the wealth of Irish literary and historical culture to you on the Internet, for the use and benefit of everyone worldwide. It has a searchable online textbase consisting of over 19 million words, in 1638 contemporary and historical documents from many areas, including literature, medicine, and the other arts.

Early English Books Online This link opens in a new window
Contains digital facsimile page images of a large collection of work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and British North America, and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700.

Celtic Digital Initiative
The aim of the Celtic Digital Initiative (CDI) is to make scarce resources available in an electronic format to students and scholars, both within UCC and beyond.
Historical Irish Corpus, 1600–1926
You can search here for words and phrases in a range of over 3000 texts published in Irish between 1600 and 1926. Search results can be selected and words and phrases can be read in the context in which they were originally written.
National Archives of Ireland
The National Archives of Ireland is the official repository for the state records of Ireland.

Nineteenth Century Fiction This link opens in a new window
Access a collection of British and Irish novels from the period of 1782 to 1903.

Multimedia Collections

Digital Literary Atlas of Ireland, 1922-1949
The Digital Literary Atlas of Ireland, 1922-1949, provides literary, historical and geo-spatial perspectives on Ireland from drawn from the works of selected Irish writers in the early twentieth century.
The Doegen Records Web Project
This archive of Irish dialect sound recordings made during 1928-31 contains folktales, songs and other material recited by native Irish speakers from 17 counties.
Irish Script on Screen
Established in 1999, ISOS is the largest digital repository of Irish manuscripts. Over 450 manuscripts digitised.
Murals of Northern Ireland
This collection forms an archive of murals, street art, graffiti and memorials from Northern Ireland - Nationalist, Republican, Unionist, Loyalist and non-aligned - which appeared during the Troubles and the post-conflict period (1979-2020). The materials record the representation of history, the expression of political standpoints, the articulation of community concerns, the formation of collective memory and modes of ideological address. The images range from overtly political declarations, to brutal depictions of the conflict, to comments on peace and the peace process, to humour and irony.
National Gallery of Ireland
The National Gallery of Ireland houses the national collection of Irish and European art.

News and Newspaper Archives

Irish Newspaper Archives This link opens in a new window
The archive consists of over 6 million pages of newspaper content from titles North and South of the Irish border and through the newspaper obituaries Irish genealogists can search, retrieve and view births, deaths and marriage records from over 279 year's worth of Irish publications.

National Library of Ireland: Newspaper Database
RTÉ Archives
RTÉ Archives are responsible for collecting, preserving and making accessible the creative and documentary output of the national broadcaster.

Government, Archives, Documents, and Data

National Archives of Ireland
The National Archives of Ireland is the official repository for the state records of Ireland.

Archives Unbound: Northern Ireland: A Divided Community, 1921-1972 Cabinet Papers of the Stormont Administration This link opens in a new window
Includes the cabinet papers of the Stormont administration that governed Northern Ireland, 1921–1972. Documents detail the workings of local administration and emergence of civil strife.
Archives Unbound: The Dublin Castle Records 1798-1926 This link opens in a new window
Contains material of the British administration in Ireland from 1798 to 1926.

Census of Ireland 1901/1911
The household returns and ancillary records for the censuses of Ireland of 1901 and 1911, which are in the custody of the National Archives of Ireland, represent an extremely valuable part of the Irish national heritage.
Central Statistics Office/ An Phríomh-Oifig Staidrimh
Statistics from the Irish Government, including census, business, economic, environmental and social statistics.
Documents on Irish Foreign Policy
Documents on Irish Foreign Policy (DIFP) is a public history programme for the study of modern Irish history through diplomacy. DIFP aims to make the history of Irish foreign policy accessible to all and promotes public engagement with the history of Ireland’s international relations.
Griffith's Valuation
First full-scale valuation of property in Ireland, published between 1847 and 1864.
The Irish State Administration Database
The Irish State Administration Database records information about the formal development and
composition of Irish government and public administration organisational structures at the
national level since 1922. It consists of two interlinked datasets – the first recording all nationallevel public organisations (or units) that have existed over this period, the second recording changes (or events) to these organisations, including their creation and any subsequent alteration in form, role and function.
Landed Estates Database
A database of landed estates and historic houses in Connacht, Munster and the counties of Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan, c. 1700 – 1914
Logainm.ie
Database of the placenames of Ireland, with maps, Irish and English names, pronunciation guide and information from the Ordnance Survey records.
The Online Historical Population Reports Website
The Online Historical Population Reports (OHPR) collection provides online access to the complete British population reports for Britain and Ireland from 1801 to 1937.