DUNRAVEN, Countess & Earl of: Memorials of Adare Manor by Caroline, Countess of Dunraven, with Historical Notices of Adare by her son, The Earl of Dunraven. With duo-tone lithographs by J.R. Jobbins, and fifty-five illustrations throughout text.

Oxford: Printed for Private Circulation, By Messrs. Parker, 1865. Quarto. pp. xii, 303, 31 (plates). Green cloth, gilt armorial device on upper cover, titled in gilt. Rebacked. A good copy. Very scarce.

Only the BL copy located on COPAC.
Edwin Richard Windham Wyndham Quin, third Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl was born in London, 1812. He graduated B.A. Trinity College, Dublin, 1833, and as Viscount Adair represented Glamorgan as a Conservative 1837-1851. While in the Commons he converted to Catholicism and concentrated his political activity on safeguarding religious education in Ireland. He succeeded his father as third earl in 1850. He subsequently became one of the commissioners of national education in Ireland 1861–71. Appointed as lord lieutenant of Limerick in 1864, he became a knight of St Patrick in March 1866, and in June 1866 was created a peer of the UK, taking the title of Baron Kenry. Described as ‘a lover and patron of everything Irish, a resident landlord and an amiable and accomplished gentleman’ (Annual Reg., 1871, pt ii, 161), Dunraven was interested in intellectual pursuits, he studied astronomy and spiritualism, but Irish history and archaeology was his main interest. A founder member along with Petrie, O’Donovan and Stokes of the Irish Archaeological Society in 1840 and the Celtic Society in 1845. He is said to have visited every barony in Ireland and every island off the coast, nearly always attended by a photographer. The chief results of his labours, which were designed as a continuation of those of Petrie, were embodied in ‘Notes on Irish Architecture’ (edited by Margaret Stokes), and the present volume. He was a man of quick perceptions and great power of application, a zealous convert to Catholicism, and a highly popular landlord. His mother was also interested in antiquarian studies; he edited her papers as ‘Memoirs of Adare Manor by Caroline, countess of Dunraven’ (1865), which included some of his own research on local archaeological remains, notes on the genealogy of the O’Quins of Inchiquin and the Quins of Adare and the round tower of the church of Dysart. This work is a minute and exhaustive treatise on the architectural remains of Adare and its vicinity, illustrated throughout with a series of very fine tinted plates.