Deirdre Ní Chuanacháin's Utopianism in Eighteenth-Century Ireland is the first full-length study of the subject in which English-language utopian texts typically discussed almost exclusively as part of early modern English fiction are considered in the Irish context of their origin. In the introductory chapter, Ní Chuanacháin points to the unique status of Irish utopianism “at the interface between languages, Irish and English, between Catholic and Protestant communities and their respective cultures, between colonial and anti-colonial writings” and identifies the key elements of Irish utopias in English as “satire, improvement, patriotism, national feeling and the wider colonial, anti-colonial, political concerns” (7), the manifestations of which will be traced in the texts and practical undertakings analyzed in the book. She also presents a brief survey of different approaches to the key concepts of utopia and utopianism and decides to rely mainly, though not exclusively, on the definitions and distinctions proposed by Lyman Tower Sargent. In chapter 4, she supplements Sargent's insights with Leszek Kołakowski's broad conception of utopia as a certain way of thinking, mentality, or a philosophical attitude. It is somewhat surprising that Ní Chuanacháin did not take into account Bronislaw Baczko's seminal study of eighteenth-century utopianism available in English under the title of Utopian Lights (1989), or Ruth Levitas' more recent Utopia as Method (2013), in which she introduces the idea of utopia as “imaginary reconstitution of the society” (xi), a far more useful concept for Ní Chuanacháin's project than “utopia as desire” (19).

In chapter 2, “Utopian Geographies,” Ní Chuanacháin offers a succinct account of traditional Irish utopian forms and texts predating the eighteenth-century, such as the aisling (vision poetry), the quasi-utopian motifs of the mythical submarine island of Hy Brasil and Tír na nÓg, the Land of Youth, as well as Richard Head's satirical comedy Hic et ubique, or, The humours of Dublin (1663), which she regards as essential to “an understanding of the Irish eighteenth-century utopian imagining” (27). She characterizes the aisling as a genre embodying the “utopian longing” (25) that combines millennial tendencies with nostalgia, a desire to return to the natural order before the English colonization, which manifested itself often in seventeenth-century Irish poetry.

In chapter 3, the study of texts gives way to the history of early philosophical societies founded in the eighteenth-century and the scientific and political projects and activities undertaken by them. Their utopian dimension “can be seen as an emergent ‘structure of feeling,’ as these intellectual societies were committed to notions of improvement” (68). The leading Dublin Society encouraged all kinds of inventions and improvements in arts and crafts, agriculture and manufacture, introducing special premiums for promoting useful arts and manufactures.

In chapter 4 Ní Chuanacháin turns to the life and works of George Berkeley, foregrounding his various utopian projects, especially the abortive plan for establishing a college in Bermuda as presented in his Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches in Our Foreign Plantations, and for Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity (1724). Here one could expect Ní Chuanacháin to at least mention a very important and popular eighteenth-century utopia Memoirs of Signior Gaudentio di Lucca (1737), which for many years, until his son published a denial, was believed to have been written by George Berkeley. Moreover, David Berman and Ian Campbell Ross in their article “George Berkeley and the Authorship of ‘The Memoirs of Signor Gaudentio di Lucca’” (Irish University Review 41, no.1 [March 2011]: 196–201) argue that both internal (textual) and external evidence suggest that Berkeley was indeed the author of the novel. The second part of the chapter is devoted to a discussion of Theobald Wolfe Tone's plan of a utopian military colony delineated in his Sandwich Islands Memorandum (1790), its underlying principles combining “republican and colonial utopianism” (103), possible practical applications, and the economic and political circumstances responsible for the ultimate rejection of the project by the authorities.

Ní Chuanacháin begins chapter 5 with a brief discussion of Swift's Laputa as representing the contemporaneous Anglo-Irish relations and parodying the Royal Society, followed by a detailed presentation of four narratives set on the moon: Murgath McDermot's A Trip to the Moon (1728), Francis Gentleman's A Trip to the Moon (1764/5), anonymous History of the Customs, Manners, and Religion of the Moon (1782), and Lady Mount Cashell's unpublished Selene (written in 1820s) which represent the dominant satirical trend in Irish utopian fiction concerned mainly with ridiculing and criticizing the dystopian status quo. Hence, estrangement realized both by the spatial distance and radical differences in social, political and religious systems of the lunar societies constitutes the dominant device employed in those texts.

In chapter 6, Ní Chuanacháin presents a detailed analysis of Samuel Madden's Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (1733), the first English-language text to be set in the future, focusing on its utopian and satirical aspects and pointing to their application to the present, especially as a way of extending support and admiration for Frederick, Prince of Wales and the prime minister, Robert Walpole.

In the short concluding chapter, Ní Chuanacháin stresses the multifaceted nature of Irish utopianism, as well as its “peculiarity and uniqueness” occasioned by the characteristics of Irish culture and “the contingencies of history” (197), considering briefly the later evolution of Irish utopianism from satirical texts to more pragmatic utopian visions, social movements and first attempts at establishing utopian communities such as the cooperative at Ralahine which, despite its short life span, exerted a major influence on later utopian thought.

Ní Chuanacháin's book is an interesting and meticulously documented study of an important, though largely neglected subject. It provides much new and useful information about rarely analyzed texts and demonstrates the extent to which they contribute to the unique character of Irish utopianism. If there is a weak point in her account, it is connected with the lack of a more comprehensive contrastive comparison of Irish and English utopias from the same period. After all, they did not function in their native contexts alone, but were published and read in both countries.