Canon Frederick Donovan's Dunlavin, 1884-1896: A West Wicklow Village in the Late Nineteenth Century Book

Frederick Augustine Donovan served as parish priest in Dunlavin for twelve years, during which great changes occurred both nationally and locally. He recorded many of these changes in his diary. This study utilises the diary - an important primary source - for the first time. It portrays the history of ordinary people as they experienced it themselves and, specifically, as Canon Donovan perceived it. Many other sources are also used to reveal political, religious and social divisions within the local community. Such divisions were particularly evident in two strands of village life, religion and politics. Donovan was a significant figure in the Catholic parish during the devotional revolution and emerging Catholic confidence is compared to the experience of the Rev Samuel Russell McGee's local Church of Ireland parish. Politically Donovan was involved in the Irish National League and, as an anti-Parnellite, in the Irish National Federation. Although he saw the fortunes of Nationalists improve during his tenure in Dunlavin, when Donovan died in 1896 he left behind him a party, a country and a parish bearing the scars of recent division.