KEANE, Marcus. The Towers and Temples of Ancient Ireland. Their Origin and History discussed from a new point of view (Signed presentation copy)

With numerous illustrations. Dublin: Hodges, Smith and Co., 1867. Quarto. pp. xx, 492, + errata. Bound by Cavenagh of Dublin (label on lower pastedown) in green cloth, title and gilt decoration on rebacked spine. From the library of Michael Meade, Esqr., personally inscribed to him from the author. Later signature of J.S. Greene. Light rubbing to extremities. A very good and rare inscribed copy.
Marcus Keane’s The Towers and Temples of Ancient Ireland is a substantial and visually rich contribution to the nineteenth-century debate over the origin and purpose of Ireland’s round towers and allied ecclesiastical monuments. Writing against the then ascendant conclusions of George Petrie (whose 1840s essays argued for a medieval Christian origin as bell-towers and refuges), Keane advances an anti-Petrie thesis: that the towers and certain sculptural forms (notably high crosses and “temples”) preserve the material traces of an earlier fire-worshipping / “Baal” cult and Near-Eastern influences, only later assimilated by the Irish Church. He buttresses the argument with an energetic compilation of local surveys, measured sketches, toponymic glosses, folklore, and comparative antiquities, producing a book whose numerous wood-engraved illustrations and site-by-site notices remain valuable records of many locations in Clare, Limerick and beyond, some now altered or lost.

[L4 FS E]