Spanning 1,500 years of Irish life, and containing almost 11,000 biographies, the Dictionary of Irish Biography is now available free online.

If all politics is local, then perhaps all interest in history is slightly local too, and, if so, perhaps a look at local entries might be informative. With that in mind, I went looking through the treasure trove that is the Dictionary of Irish Biography (DIB) for mentions of my native Glanworth.

The DIB, a comprehensive online dictionary of almost 11,000 of the most famous people in Irish history, has been made available for the first time free to the public. There are some strict criteria surrounding qualification for inclusion in the DIB, which was launched in 2009 by the Royal Irish Academy.

“First and foremost, subjects eligible for inclusion must be dead (usually for at least five years) and must either be born on the island of Ireland or have had a significant career there,” writes DIB researcher Terry Clavin in the Irish Times. “Exiles (like James Joyce) are included as are blow-ins (like St Patrick), but not second- or more-generation emigrants of Irish extraction (like John F Kennedy), unless they resettle in the old country.”

Women have been poorly served by the DIB, only making up 10% of the original 2009 publication, something which Clavin says reflects the lack of opportunity for women in Irish society. That representation has more than doubled now, and Clavin says it will continue to improve, thanks in no small part to the growth in scholarship around women’s history. (The work of the Daughters of Dún Iascaigh history group in Cahir this month should be at the top of the DIB inbox.)

Recent additions include Violet Gibson, the Irishwoman who shot Mussolini, and Mary Young, the notorious pickpocket and crime boss immortalised as Jenny Diver in John Gay’s 1728 The Beggar’s Opera and then as Pirate Jenny in the 1928 The Threepenny Opera by Hauptmann/Brecht/Weill.

No assassins or crime bosses feature among the entries relating to Glanworth, but we live in hope of future additions.

There are

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