Drawing on many different archives, many previously un-catalogued, Mary Jones has assembled a collection of over 230 images that effectively trace the social history of Ireland from the dawn of the age of Irish photography to the end of British rule.

The main emphasis in these images is on the social history of the period, although due attention is also given to political events. There are images here of factory scenes, of agricultural labourers, of evictions and industrial strikes, of bourgeois splendour and grinding poverty.