Royal Irish Academy

Royal Irish Academy, founded in 1785 under the presidency of Charlemont; a royal charter was granted in 1786. Membership quickly rose to 138: it comprised mostly academics, clergy, nobility, and gentry, with members of parliament and of the judiciary. The academy was accommodated in Navigation House, Grafton Street, Dublin; in 1852 it moved to its present headquarters in Dawson Street.

Although in principle the academy cultivated science, polite literature, and antiquities, in practice its interests included most fields of knowledge. By the middle of the 19th century it was the senior learned society in Ireland, much prestige deriving from the work of members such as Rowan Hamilton, Petrie, and Wilde. The academy published Transactions (1787–1907) and Proceedings (1836 to the present); it also issued catalogues of libraries, exhibitions, and private papers, dictionaries of the Irish language, facsimiles and critical editions of Irish manuscripts and texts, and miscellaneous works dealing with Irish history and culture. It built up an important library and the most extensive collection of manuscripts in Ireland. By the early 1900s the academy's membership had become over‐whelmingly scholarly, though without sacrificing its multidisciplinary character. In the mid‐1990s membership was about 275, with 60 honorary members.

David Sturdy