100 books like Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, 1685-1766

By Eamonn O'Ciardha,

Here are 100 books that Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, 1685-1766 fans have personally recommended if you like Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, 1685-1766. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion

Murray Pittock Author Of Culloden: Great Battles

From my list on how Jacobitism had a different vision for Britain.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in the former Jacobite heartland of Aberdeen, I've had an interest in the Jacobites for almost as long as I can remember. When I was about six, my father was explaining to me on a bus in King Street in the city that Charles Edward could never have won, when another passenger walked the length of the top deck to contradict him. Lost, excluded, and alternative histories fascinated me and still do. History’s winners still too often present partial and excluding stories. Even in Scotland, Jacobitism is still misunderstood, but understanding is much better than it was thirty years ago, and I'm pleased to have done my bit to change that.

Murray's book list on how Jacobitism had a different vision for Britain

Murray Pittock Why did Murray love this book?

The largest – but also the worst ledJacobite military challenge to Great Britain happened in 1715, when more than 20 000 men volunteered to fight.

Daniel Szechi tells their story more fully than anyone else, and sees Scottish opposition to the 1707 Union with England as one of the greatest motivators of the Jacobite Rising.

By Daniel Szechi,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked 1715 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Lacking the romantic imagery of the 1745 uprising of supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 has received far less attention from scholars. Yet the '15, just eight years after the union of England and Scotland, was in fact a more significant threat to the British state. This book is the first thorough account of the Jacobite rebellion that might have killed the Act of Union in its infancy.

Drawing on a substantial range of fresh primary resources in England, Scotland, and France, Daniel Szechi analyzes not only large and dramatic moments of the rebellion but also…


Book cover of Jacobitism and the English People, 1688-1788

Daniel Szechi Author Of 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion

From my list on the Jacobite Risings.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a retired history professor with over forty years experience working in the field of eighteenth-century history and Jacobitism in particular. I got interested in Jacobitism when I was an undergraduate and the more I have researched and written on the subject the more fascinated I have become with it. By reading about it you can glimpse the alternatives to the present that might have been. What if the great Jacobite rising of 1715 had succeeded? What if Bonnie Prince Charlie had marched south from Derby and captured London in 1745? The permutations are endless and will certainly keep me engaged for the rest of my life.

Daniel's book list on the Jacobite Risings

Daniel Szechi Why did Daniel love this book?

One of the greatest ‘what-ifs?’ of the Jacobite movement centres on the English Jacobites and the fundamental question of why they were so politically important within the movement and yet so useless in terms of achieving a Stuart restoration. 

England was the most powerful of the three kingdoms of the British Isles and a major section of the Tory party, the most popular party in England, episodically developed a yearning for such a restoration. Yet it never took off. Monod’s classic book explores English Jacobitism in admirably fine and lucid detail and provides the best answer we are going to get.

By Paul Kleber Monod,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Jacobitism and the English People, 1688-1788 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Although historians have devoted much attention to the influence of Jacobitism on Parliamentary politics, none has hitherto attempted to explore its broader implications in English society. Paul Monod's acclaimed study, newly available in paperback, redresses this, and offers a wide-ranging analysis of every aspect of Jacobite activity.


Book cover of Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart

Daniel Szechi Author Of 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion

From my list on the Jacobite Risings.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a retired history professor with over forty years experience working in the field of eighteenth-century history and Jacobitism in particular. I got interested in Jacobitism when I was an undergraduate and the more I have researched and written on the subject the more fascinated I have become with it. By reading about it you can glimpse the alternatives to the present that might have been. What if the great Jacobite rising of 1715 had succeeded? What if Bonnie Prince Charlie had marched south from Derby and captured London in 1745? The permutations are endless and will certainly keep me engaged for the rest of my life.

Daniel's book list on the Jacobite Risings

Daniel Szechi Why did Daniel love this book?

This is simply the best biography of Charles Edward Stuart. It is meticulously researched and absolutely gimlet-like in its analysis of the man and his career. 

Yet though McLynn depicts the prince warts and all (and some of the warts, such as his propensity for domestic violence, are pretty disgusting), he retains a fundamental sympathy for the flawed human being.  In the larger sense it is very much an account, too, of the gathering degradation of a man who in other circumstances might have become a radical, reforming monarch.

By Frank McLynn,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Bonnie Prince Charlie as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this highly acclaimed study Frank McLynn brings vividly before us the man Charles Edward Stuart who became known to legend as Bonnie Prince Charlie and whose unsuccessful challenge to the Hanoverian throne was followed by the crushing defeat at Culloden in 1746. He argues powerfully that failure was far from inevitable and history in 1745 came close to taking quite a different turn.


Book cover of The Jacobites and Russia, 1715-1750

Murray Pittock Author Of Culloden: Great Battles

From my list on how Jacobitism had a different vision for Britain.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in the former Jacobite heartland of Aberdeen, I've had an interest in the Jacobites for almost as long as I can remember. When I was about six, my father was explaining to me on a bus in King Street in the city that Charles Edward could never have won, when another passenger walked the length of the top deck to contradict him. Lost, excluded, and alternative histories fascinated me and still do. History’s winners still too often present partial and excluding stories. Even in Scotland, Jacobitism is still misunderstood, but understanding is much better than it was thirty years ago, and I'm pleased to have done my bit to change that.

Murray's book list on how Jacobitism had a different vision for Britain

Murray Pittock Why did Murray love this book?

The Jacobites and their cause were a global political phenomenon, celebrated from Madagascar to Latin America.

Rebecca Wills’ study is one of the few that examines the Jacobites in one country – Russia – which was a major destination of Jacobite exiles. Some of their service to the Tsar has a contemporary resonance-General James Francis Edward Keith (1696-1758) was both governor of Ukraine and Viceroy of Finland in the 1740s.

By Rebecca Wills,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Jacobites and Russia, 1715-1750 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This study explores the role played by the Jacobite diaspora in Russia in the saga of Jacobite intrigue and British foreign policy between 1715 and 1750. Drawing on both Russian and British sources, the narrative follows the changing fortunes of Jacobitism in Russia as a key influence on European diplomacy. Uncovering a tale of adventure, enterprise and espionage, it demonstrates that the threat posed by Jacobite intrigue was not confined to the possibility of military action, but was closely linked to the influence of Jacobite agents on every area of Anglo-Russian political and territorial rivalry. In doing so it relates…


Book cover of Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart, 1603-1788

Daniel Szechi Author Of 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion

From my list on the Jacobite Risings.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a retired history professor with over forty years experience working in the field of eighteenth-century history and Jacobitism in particular. I got interested in Jacobitism when I was an undergraduate and the more I have researched and written on the subject the more fascinated I have become with it. By reading about it you can glimpse the alternatives to the present that might have been. What if the great Jacobite rising of 1715 had succeeded? What if Bonnie Prince Charlie had marched south from Derby and captured London in 1745? The permutations are endless and will certainly keep me engaged for the rest of my life.

Daniel's book list on the Jacobite Risings

Daniel Szechi Why did Daniel love this book?

When Jacobitism comes up in films and television Scotland is almost invariably to the fore, and within Scotland it is the Highland clans who feature most prominently. 

This is entirely reasonable because they were the key military asset the exiled Stuarts possessed in the British Isles, and in 1745 Charles Edward initially built the army that marched south to Derby around his primarily Gaelic-speaking clan soldiers. But there was far more to them than the dumbly loyal stereotype of the clansman that is often found in popular books on the Highlands. 

Macinnes reconstructs the Jacobite clans’ economic, social, and historical backstory so well that you will never see them in the same light again.

By Allan I. MacInnes,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart, 1603-1788 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is an appraisal of clanship both with respect to its vitality and its eventual demise, in which the author views clanship as a socio-economic, as well as a political agency, deriving its strength from personal obligations and mutual service between chiefs and gentry and their clansmen. Its demise is attributed to the throwing over of these personal obligations by the clan elite, not to legislation or central government repression. The book discusses the impact on the clans of the inevitable shift, with the passage of time, from feudalism to capitalism, regardless of the "Forty Five". It draws upon estate…


Book cover of The Myth of the Jacobite Clans: The Jacobite Army in 1745

Daniel Szechi Author Of 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion

From my list on the Jacobite Risings.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a retired history professor with over forty years experience working in the field of eighteenth-century history and Jacobitism in particular. I got interested in Jacobitism when I was an undergraduate and the more I have researched and written on the subject the more fascinated I have become with it. By reading about it you can glimpse the alternatives to the present that might have been. What if the great Jacobite rising of 1715 had succeeded? What if Bonnie Prince Charlie had marched south from Derby and captured London in 1745? The permutations are endless and will certainly keep me engaged for the rest of my life.

Daniel's book list on the Jacobite Risings

Daniel Szechi Why did Daniel love this book?

This is one of the most important books on Jacobitism written in the last 30 years, and I am not recommending it simply because he is a personal friend! 

The book completely debunks the commonplace image of the Jacobite army as a purely clan phenomenon. Pittock proves it was a truly national Scottish army, drawn from almost every community in Scotland, with strong international connections and elements. 

Lowlanders served alongside Highlanders and a smattering of Irishmen and Englishmen in regiments with clan names but an increasingly professional military outlook. By doing so he permanently moves our understanding of the most famous of the Jacobite risings.

By Murray Pittock,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Myth of the Jacobite Clans as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Myth of the Jacobite Clans was first published in 1995: a revolutionary book, it argued that British history had long sought to caricature Jacobitism rather than to understand it, and that the Jacobite Risings drew on extensive Lowland support and had a national quality within Scotland. The Times Higher Education Supplement hailed its author's 'formidable talents' and the book and its ideas fuelled discussions in The Economist and Scotland on Sunday, on Radio Scotland and elsewhere. The argument of the book has been widely accepted, although it is still ignored by media and heritage representations which seek to depoliticise…


Book cover of The Winter Sea

Lena Gibson Author Of Switching Tracks: Out of the Trash

From my list on books that combine love, action, and speculative elements.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been an avid reader and loved different genres from the beginning. I started out reading historical fiction as a child, including the Little House books, Anne of Green Gables, and Where the Red Fern Grows. I soon discovered that science fiction and fantasy did the same thing, transporting me to different worlds and places instead of times. Many of my favorite books have elements of these as well as action, tension, thrills, and romance. These things transcend genre, and by reading books that combine genres, I find some of the most interesting and original stories. 

Lena's book list on books that combine love, action, and speculative elements

Lena Gibson Why did Lena love this book?

This was the fifth time I have read this book, and I swear I love it just as much every time I read it.

The book is about a writer who has a story come to her in waking dreams and flashes of vivid insight. The story of the past is one of her ancestors who lived near this place.

As a writer, this idea appeals to me. Some of my favorite ideas have come to me in the space between waking and sleeping. The dual timeline of present and historical mesh seamlessly so that the two pieces complement each other, and I love rediscovering all the ways the pieces connect.

Having met the author and taken a dozen workshops with her, I appreciate the craft that went into the writing. Plus, she’s a fellow Canadian.

By Susanna Kearsley,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Winter Sea as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER!

"I've loved every one of Susanna's books! She has bedrock research and a butterfly's delicate touch with characters―sure recipe for historical fiction that sucks you in and won't let go!"―DIANA GABALDON, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Outlander

A hauntingly beautiful tale of love that transcends time: an American writer travels to Scotland to craft a novel about the Jacobite Rebellion, only to discover her own ancestral memories of that torrid moment in Scottish history...

In the spring of 1708, an invading Jacobite fleet of French and Scottish soldiers nearly succeeded…


Book cover of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites

Elizabeth Ford Author Of The Flute in Scotland from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century

From my list on eighteenth-century Scotland.

Why am I passionate about this?

I dropped out of law school to pursue a PhD in music at the University of Glasgow and to write the history of the flute in Scotland. Essentially, I wanted to know that if Scotland was a leader in Enlightenment thought, and if there were hundreds of publications with flute on the title page, and since the flute was the most popular amateur instrument in the eighteenth century, why was nothing written about the flute. I obsessively read Scottish mythology as a child, and was always drawn to the stereotypical wild misty landscapes of Scotland without knowing much about it. 

Elizabeth's book list on eighteenth-century Scotland

Elizabeth Ford Why did Elizabeth love this book?

This is a collection of essays for a major exhibit at the National Museum of Scotland in 2017. It features essays on aspects of the endurance of the Jacobite cause, and objects associated with Jacobitism (like Bonnie Prince Charlie’s silver picnic set). It also has over 200 pictures. This myth has endured through the writings of Sir Walter Scott through Outlander, and this book presents the much, much larger, and more complex story.

By David Forsyth (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the summer of 1745 'Bonnie Prince Charlie', grandson of James VII and II landed on the Isle of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. He would be the Jacobite Stuarts' last hope in the fight to regain the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. The Jacobite legend has an enduring fascination and now renewed global interest due to the Outlander books and television series. A major new exhibition on Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites opens at the National Museum of Scotland on 23 June 2017, and tells a compelling story of love, loss, exile, rebellion and…


Book cover of Waverley

Beatrice de Graaf Author Of Fighting Terror After Napoleon: How Europe Became Secure After 1815

From my list on how Europe waged peace after Napoleon.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was struck by the memoirs of Louisa Adams who travelled through Europe during the last Napoleonic battles. She was a young mother, and had to take her 7-year old son with her. Having children myself, I started wondering: how did people "on the ground" experience the last stages of the Napoleonic wars and the transition towards peace? I am a professor in the History of International Relations at Utrecht University. I write about terrorism and security in the 20th and 21st centuries. Yet, over the past decade, I felt the need to go further back in time, to that seminal period of the Age of Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, because that period truly saw the birth of a new security culture in Europe and beyond.

Beatrice's book list on how Europe waged peace after Napoleon

Beatrice de Graaf Why did Beatrice love this book?

To understand the trauma caused by the Napoleonic Wars, and the craving of people in France, Europe and elsewhere to return to the ‘normal pace of times’ as the Austrian Statesman Clemens von Metternich had it, Walter Scott’s ‘Waverley’ is the best vehicle to convey ourselves into the mindset of the contemporary Europeans. Europe had to curb the ‘evil passions’ and had to ‘come to its senses’. Just as Waverley’s young hero Edward does by letting go of his romantic love for the rebellious Flora and returning in the arms of his very English, quiet and harmonious fiancée, Rose. Scott’s Waverley came out in 1814, was a bestselling success in Britain and on the European continent. The protagonists of my book, Fighting terror, read it. And it still is a great read for us today, for rainy days.

By Sir Walter Scott,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Waverley as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 8, 9, 10, and 11.

What is this book about?

Life with his regiment in Scotland is dull until he visits his uncle's friends in the Highlands, where he meets Fergus McIvor and his sister Flora. Attracted by the wild freedom and romance of the Scottish clans, Edward finds himself in a difficult and dangerous position. His new friends are Jacobites, planning to overthrow King George and restore the Stuart monarchy. The Jacobites rise in rebellion. When Prince Charles leads an invasion of England, Edward's loyalties are hopelessly divided. Whose side will he take? And what fate awaits them all?


Book cover of Witch Light

Caroline Hardaker Author Of Composite Creatures

From my list on creepy books with women in the lead role.

Why am I passionate about this?

Caroline Hardaker is an author, poet, and librettist who writes dark and twisty tales about anything speculative, from folklore to the future. She’s a sporadic puppet-maker and house plant collector, and lives in the northeast of England with her husband, son, and giant cat. Caroline’s debut poetry collection, Bone Ovation, was published by Valley Press in 2017, and her first full-length collection, Little Quakes Every Day, was published by Valley Press in November 2020. Caroline’s debut novel, Composite Creatures, was published by Angry Robot in April 2021.

Caroline's book list on creepy books with women in the lead role

Caroline Hardaker Why did Caroline love this book?

While this book isn’t necessarily a horror, this slow, poetic, and tragic story about a young girl born in the wrong time hits me right in the heart. Corrag is a wild young girl from the mountains of Scotland who has been imprisoned as a witch. It’s 1692, and in a cold, filthy cell, she awaits her fate of death by burning—until she is visited by a young Irishman, hungry to question her. Corrag’s story flows from the beautiful poetic descriptions of wild Scottish life to the brutal Massacre of Glencoe in a style that’s absolutely unforgettable.

By Susan Fletcher,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Witch Light as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The new novel from Susan Fletcher, author of the bestselling 'Eve Green' and 'Oystercatchers'.

1692. Corrag, a wild young girl from the mountains of Scotland, has been imprisoned as a witch. Terrified, in a cold, filthy cell, she awaits her fate of death by burning - until she is visited by Charles Leslie, a young Irishman, hungry to question her. For Corrag knows more than it seems: she was witness to the bloody and brutal Massacre of Glencoe.

But to reveal what she knows, Corrag demands a chance to tell her true story. It is a tale of passion and…


Book cover of 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion
Book cover of Jacobitism and the English People, 1688-1788
Book cover of Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart

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