Book excerpt: Women in Ireland 1800-1918 presents a valuable and significant collection of over 100 sources and documents relating to the public and private aspects of women's lives in Ireland during the period 1800-1918. The documents reveal aspects of the women's working lives, educational experiences, involvement in politics and of their private lives such as contraception, childbirth, love, marriage and religion. Each section has a comprehensive introduction which discusses the contents of the documents. As the first major survey of Irish women's lives during this period, it will appeal to those who want a deeper understanding of how women of all classes lived their lives and it will prove indispensable to second and third level students, those attending women's studies courses, as well as a wide general readership interested in assessing the role of women in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Irish history.