Tracing the history of the Catholic-authored novel in nineteenth-century Ireland, Emer Nolan offers a unique tour of Ireland's literary landscape from its early origins during the Catholic political resurgence of the 1820s to the transformative zenith brought on by James Joyce's Ulysses in 1922. Nolan observes that contemporary Irish literature is steeped in the ambitions and internal conflicts of a previously captive Irish Catholic culture that came into its own with the narrative art form. She offers a major reassessment of such figures as Thomas Moore, George Moore, and Charles Kickham and of sentimental fiction in nineteenth-century Ireland. With keen insight and deft arguments, Nolan presents a highly original exploration of James Joyce and his relationship to his nineteenth-century Irish Catholic predecessors. At once provocative and enlightening, Catholic Emancipations is an invaluable addition to the fields of Irish studies, Joyce studies, and the nineteenth-century novel.