This lecture will take a look at life in Waterford and Tipperary in the 1790s, with particular reference to Tramore and Bunmahon, as recorded in the verses of Edward Mandeville and the writings of Dorothea Herbert.

Thursday the 20th of February at 7.30 pm at Dunhill Multi-Education Centre, Eircode X91 FVF9

This talk is broadly based on a book published in 1798, with the uninspiring title Miscellaneous Poems, by Edward M. Mandeville Esq.  But who was Edward M. Mandeville Esq., and what is so interesting about these poems?

          Fast-forward two hundred years, to the untimely death in 1998 of our friend, my contemporary, Nigel de la Poer.  During the course of many years as a much loved teacher of small boys at a private school in England, Nigel had planned his retirement to his lovely gate-lodge in the grounds of his former family home at Gurteen le Poer near Kilsheelan, where he would write the definitive history of the Power clan.  But alas, Myelodysplasia – a form of bone marrow cancer – put paid to that.

          Among his papers which his brother kindly passed on to me was a tranche on the Mandeville family (an aunt of Nigel’s had married a Mandeville), and among them was a photocopy of the title-page and contents of this book.  It was the list of contents that interested me, and the fact that the book had been printed in Waterford, and many years later, when I came to research the Mandevilles, I bought myself a facsimile copy, nicely bound in crimson vellum, from Gyan Books in India.  (Copies still available at a modest €32, post-free!)  So here we are.