Little till now has been documented about Devane’s zeal to order and control the lives of the working-classes. His opinions, beliefs and thinking were largely shaped before he joined the Jesuits in 1918. This comprehensive study is therefore required to place Devane within the narrative of Irish history of the early twentieth century.

Martin Walsh holds a PhD from the University of Limerick. His research interests lie in the ideas of nation-building in nineteenth and twentieth-century Ireland and England through the ordering of the working-classes by middle-class social purists.