Founded in 1853, prior to the Dublin Celtic Society, the Ossianic Society, with such members as John O’Daly, William Elliot Hudson, John Edward Pigot, Owen Connellan, John Windele, and William Smith O’Brien, played a leading role in the Celtic revival in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland. The primary aim of the Society was to collect, publish, and translate the Ossian and Finnian poems in English; and during its nine-year existence it released six volumes of its Transactions, all of which are reprinted here in a facsimile format. Despite its short life, the Society’s influence on later key Irish literary figures—W. B. Yeats in particular—is evident, and the Transactions are vital source texts for all students and scholars of Irish literature and poetry.
