Cuireann Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann an taighde chun cinn. Tugaimid aitheantas do scoth taighdeoirí na hÉireann. Tugaimid tacaíocht don scoláireacht agus cuirimid an pobal ar an eolas faoin leas atá le baint as an eolaíocht agus as na daonnachtaí. Creidimid gur gá an dea-thaighde a chur chun cinn, a chothú agus a chur in iúl don phobal. Comhairle dá chuid ball a reachtálann an tAcadamh. Déantar baill a thoghadh agus meastar gurb é an gradam acadúil is airde in Éirinn é.
Read more about the RIAThe Dictionary of Irish Biography is Ireland’s national biographical dictionary. Devised, researched, written and edited under the auspices of the Royal Irish Academy, its online edition covers nearly 11,000 lives.
Read more about Dictionary of Irish Biography
The DIB is publishing specially curated selections of its entries along various themes. View the latest below
At a time when Ireland's relationship with alcohol is increasingly under the spotlight, the DIB has complied a selection of biographies dealing with drinking and responses to it. We start our series with John MacBride, a ‘drunken, vainglorious lout’ exemplifying the best and the worst of a type of alcohol-fuelled machismo that has long been a feature of Irish masculinity.
A victim of her husband’s alcoholism, and unwilling to play the expected role of the patiently suffering wife, Lady Catherine Morgan became the focus of nineteenth-century Ireland’s most sensational divorce case.
Our series continues with Matt Talbot, Ireland’s most celebrated reformed alcoholic. Talbot achieved posthumous fame by embracing a life of pious austerity with the same lack of moderation that had formerly characterised his drinking.
After bagging an enviable studio contract and choice film roles, Constance Smith was undone by Hollywood casting politics and subsided tragically into alcohol addiction.
We continue our series on alcohol in the DIB with famed temperance crusader Theobald Mathew.
Our series ends with Kate Meyrick, the notorious Irish ‘queen of nightclubs’ in 1920s London who was immortalised in the works of Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell.
Please write to the Managing Editor, Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2, Ireland, or email dib@ria.ie