In Ireland, few figures have generated more hatred than Oliver Cromwell, whose seventeenth-century conquest, massacres, and dispossessions would endure in the social memory for ages to come. The Devil from over the Sea explores the many ways in which Cromwell was remembered and sometimes conveniently 'forgotten' in historical, religious, political, and literary texts, according to the interests of different communities across time. Cromwell's powerful afterlife in Ireland, however, cannot be understood without also investigating his presence in folklore and the landscape, in ruins and curses. Nor can he be separated from the idea of the 'Cromwellian': a term which came to elicit an entire chain of contemptuous associations that would begin after his invasion and assume a wholly new force in the nineteenth century. What emerges from all these memorializing traces is a multitudinous Cromwell who could be represented as brutal, comic, sympathetic, or satanic. He could be discarded also, tellingly, from the accounts of the past, and especially by those which viewed him as an embarrassment or worse. In addition to exploring the many reasons why Cromwell was so vehemently remembered or forgotten in Ireland, Sarah Covington finally uncovers the larger truths conveyed by sometimes fanciful or invented accounts. Contrary to being damaging examples of myth-making, the memorializations contained in martyrologies, folk tales, or newspaper polemics were often productive in cohering communities, or in displaying agency in the form of 'counter-memories' that claimed Cromwell for their own and reshaped Irish history in the process.

About the Author
Sarah Covington is Professor of History at the Graduate Center and Queens College of the City of New York, and the Director of Irish Studies at Queens College. She is the author of The Trail of Martyrdom: Persecution and Resistance in Sixteenth Century England (2003) and Wounds, Flesh and Metaphor in Seventeenth-Century England (2009).

Reviews
This fascinating book explores how Oliver Cromwell has been remembered, forgotten, misremembered, demonized, and mythologized in Ireland and Irish America for more than three centuries. * D. R. Bisson, CHOICE *
Intriguing * Nicholas Canny, Irish Times *
This thoughtful, innovative work by Sarah Covington represents the latest, and by far the best, attempt to understand the extraordinary power of Cromwell's name and reputation amongst Irish people at home and abroad... this extraordinarily rich volume not only brings our understanding of Cromwell and his reputation in Ireland on to a new level, it also represents a further important contribution to the burgeoning field of Irish 85 memory studies by a historian who is at the height of her powers. Add to this the attractive pricing by OUP, and The Devil from over the Sea becomes a must-buy book. * Alan Ford, University of Nottingham, The Seventeenth Century *
This is a book that people with even a passing interest in Irish history have an obligation to acquire and to read. * Eamon Maher, Technological University Dublin *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198848318
Author Sarah Covington
Format Hardback
Page Count 432
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 241mm * 162mm * 26mm