Discussions of Irish classical learning and hedge schools in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are, to excuse the pun, a thorny topic. On the one hand, a romanticised image of Irish people learning the classics despite the challenges of penal laws and poverty has emerged, characterised by the historical writings of Daniel Corkery and creative elaborations by Brian Friel. For those seeking a more historical account of this learning, there are challenges arising from a dearth of information based on verifiable sources and the bias of the surviving sources. Add to this mixture issues of class and prestige, and clearly it is a brave scholar who attempts to delve into the entangled world of Irish hedge schools.

This is the task that O'Higgins sets herself in The Irish Classical Self, in which she assembles a vast array of sources which provide various angles of investigation into Irish classical learning. Ch. 2, for example, discusses the availability and circulation of Greek and Latin texts in Ireland; ch. 4 considers eighteenth-century institutional reports, mainly from religious sources; ch. 5 addresses accounts by travel writers and other narratives on schools and scholarship, while ch. 6 looks at nineteenth-century educational reform and government reports on education in the early nineteenth century. Other chapters examine poetry in the Irish language and the transmission of classical thought in eighteenth-century Irish manuscripts. The accumulation of individual examples and snapshots from such a variety of sources throughout the seven chapters results in a vast and varied compendium of references to classical learning in Ireland. O'H. has done an admirable job in gathering together an impressive range of clues and hints, approaching the topic using a variety of methodologies in order to obtain a more complete picture of what she terms ‘the Irish classical self’.

This book is at its best in presenting Greek and Latin as part of a complex history of linguistic interaction in Ireland, showing how the languages could connect the country with many communities of its past and present. In studying multiple languages and their intertwined expression, the author highlights the importance of moving beyond the Irish/English binary and, for example, seeing how Latin was important for training and links to Europe, and how Irish and Latin could be allies in learning and in national sentiment. The many examples of textual intermingling between Irish, English and Latin (and to a lesser extent Greek) show the interplay and influence between the languages and their co-existence in educational, artistic and historical settings.

The subtitle of the book is ‘poets and poor scholars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’ and it sets out to examine classical learning amongst ‘non-élite individuals’. Given this focus, it might be expected that some time would be spent on defining what is meant by non-élite. Unfortunately this is not the case, and a large semantic range of terms is used for this ‘non-élite’: at times the author refers to the ‘poor’ but other terms include ‘relatively poor’, ‘modest ranks’, ‘lower ranks’, ‘humble background’, ‘peasants’ and ‘the humbler walks of life’. The presence of a Catholic middle class in Ireland (the main recruiting ground for future clerics with a foundation in the classics) must complicate the picture and should warn against using the word ‘poor’ to encompass all apart from a wealthy elite. When Holmes noted ‘good Latin scholars’ among Kerry ‘peasants’ (123), what did he mean by this term? Are these rural labourers? Or land-holding middle classes?

Appendix D provides valuable statistical information derived from the 1834 returns of the Second Report of the Commissioners of Public Instruction about schools where the classics were taught. O'H. has placed asterisks beside schools which she has classified as potentially teaching children ‘of more modest class’. The children whose parents could afford to send them to these schools nonetheless needed to pay a fee and therefore the ‘poorest class of cottiers’ (231) would not have attended these schools. The question must arise whether the labouring class which featured in the romanticised version of Irish classical learning was in fact different to the class which actually accessed that learning. Clearly there are differentiations to be made regarding social classes, earnings, status and opportunities for learning the classics. Given that the book opens with the assertion that ‘it was not altogether uncommon to encounter learned individuals among the poor’ (7), surely this notion of the ‘poor’ needs to be addressed with nuance, sensitivity and historical accuracy and with close attention to class structures in Ireland and to their evolution over the time-period in question.

O'H. correctly situates discussions of Irish classical learning within the context of a highly-charged debate on Irish capabilities, learning and barbarism. The book makes the important point in various chapters that the presence of classical learning among the ‘poor’ could be a troubling issue, and the author provides a pathway through arguments and counter-arguments regarding Irish learning and their vested biases. It would have been good to foreground such issues of bias in the travel accounts in ch. 5, as travel writers also had embedded prejudices and ideologies influencing their discussions of classical learning. Given the politicised agenda and romanticised imagery of much of Sydney Owenson's writing on the Irish, much more contextualisation could be given to foreground her discussion of Irish ‘peasants’ (128). Similarly Sheridan's assertion that in his youth ‘the very shepherds could speak Latin’ (125) cannot be taken at face value, given the multi-layered textuality of the source and also the many mediating factors such as memory, politics and religion.

In most chapters, the author observes and details various expressions of repugnance, anxiety and resistance regarding teaching classics to the poor. It is surprising then that there is no such discussion in the book about similar attitudes towards girls and women gaining a classical education. The worries about what women might achieve and aspire to, were they educated in the classics, closely reflected the prejudices about the impact of this learning on the ‘poor’. Constantia Grierson is mentioned at the end of ch. 2 (50–1), and the reports in appendices C and D show that both girls and boys were learning the classics in schools, but unfortunately these issues are not contextualised and there is no dedicated discussion of the place of girls and women in the learning of the classics. The Irish Classical self in this book is very much a male self.

The book opens with the assertion that it traces students and unofficial schools with classical interests which were ‘unique to Ireland’ (4). Much as it would be pleasant to imagine Ireland as a beacon of dedication to the classics, no information is provided to back up this claim. Could similar learning not have occurred in, say, Belgium or Poland? Was classical learning an elite and/or institutional activity in every other European country in this era? Sweeping claims apart, this book's value lies in its unpicking of the romanticised imagery of Irish classical learning, its contextualisation within a functional environment of clerical education, and its myriad sampling of classical endeavours throughout this period.