JOY, Henry. Historical Collections relative to the Town of Belfast : from the Earliest Period to the Union with Great Britain.

Belfast: Printed and Sold by George Berwick, No. 1 North Street, 1817. Octavo. pp. xvi, 496. Modern quarter morocco over marbled boards, title in gilt on original morocco letterpiece. Occasional light foxing to prelims. A very good copy. Very rare.
JISC locates 6 copies only. WorldCat 2.
Attributed to Henry Joy. One plate called for but most copies listed on JISC have no plate.
Henry Joy, Jnr (1754-1835), newspaper proprietor and local politician, was born in Belfast. He was the eldest of the three sons of Robert Joy, textile manufacturer and his wife, Grizell (née Rainey) of Magherafelt, County Londonderry (d. 1762). He was a grandson of Francis Joy, and a first cousin of Henry Joy McCracken. He is not to be confused with another first cousin, Henry Joy (1766?-1838), barrister and judge. The Joys were Presbyterians who belonged to the Third Belfast congregation.
Henry Joy worked for his grandfather’s newspaper, the Belfast Newsletter from 1782, becoming its editor in 1789. In 1794 he jointly published Belfast Politics : A Collection of the Debates, Resolutions and Other Proceedings of that Town in the years 1792 and 1793. When the rebellion of 1798 broke out, Henry Joy served in the yeomanry. Joy was indefatigable in his spirited and practical support for several beneficent public undertakings in his native town: the Charitable Society, the dispensary, the fever hospital, the Society for Promoting Knowledge, the harp festival, and the Belfast Literary Society. He was a supporter too of Edward Bunting in his systematic study of Irish folk songs. He continued to write on political matters and in 1817 brought out another compilation of texts, Historical Collections relative to the Town of Belfast, the preface of which is a summary of his views on the politics of Belfast from its foundation until 1800.

[Cat 160]