Ireland’s newspaper of record, The Irish Times, reviewed Joseph Valente’s new book The Myth of Manliness in Irish National Culture, 1880-1922.

Recent international financial interventions brought into the public arena questions and debates about Ireland’s collective sense of national pride and self-determination, making this new study by Joseph Valente even more timely. In this work he addresses ideas around Irish cultural identity and selfhood at a formative period in our history, the years from 1880 to 1922, and explores the perceived problem around the concept of an innate Irish manliness, a problem made even more acute for a country working towards self-governance. . . . [The Myth of Manliness] offers a range of welcome insights into this new field of cultural criticism and an original way of considering how we see (and write) ourselves.