Based on the earliest published text, and enriched by material from the original manuscript, this volume reproduces the text of Dorothea Herbert’s ‘Retrospections of an Outcast’ alongside her own illustrations and family tree. Together, they reveal a work that is as much a visual and imaginative creation as it is a written one.

Published by COSDA Press, as part of the ‘Tides of Time’ Visitor Centre and exhibition in Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary, this edition reconnects Herbert’s story with the place that shaped it, inviting readers to encounter her world in a fuller and more immediate way.

The purpose of this new edition of Retrospections is to bring Dorothea Herbert’s work back into circulation in a form that reflects its original character and significance. The text published here is based on the 1929-1930 edition, as transcribed by Geoffrey Fortescue Mandeville (G.F.M.) from Herbert’s original manuscript. For the present edition, the two books are combined in a single volume with the text carefully digitised and reset, preserving its language and structure, while presenting it in a new, clear and readable format.

At the same time, it seeks to restore elements of Herbert’s work that have not been included in the later editions of 1988 and 2004, bringing the reader closer to the work as the author conceived it: a combination of narrative, image, and personal expression. Drawing on the surviving manuscript, this edition includes the thirteen illustrations or ‘cuts’ created by Herbert for her diary. These watercolours and drawings are not merely decorative, but form part of the imaginative and expressive world she constructed. They are intended to provide a natural break in the volume, appearing in a section of illustrations between the 1929 and 1930 books. This edition also reproduces the Herbert and Cuffe family trees, which were present in the first edition but omitted from the 1988 and 2004 editions.

This publication was produced as part of the ‘Tides of Time’ exhibition that opened in May 2026 in St Nicholas’ Church of Ireland building in Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary. Dorothea Herbert’s connection to this place (her father was the rector there), and her distinctive voice, make her an important guide to its past. By reissuing her work in this expanded form, it is hoped that new readers will encounter not only her story, but the world she inhabited, in greater depth.

The Carrick-on-Suir Development Committee (COSDA) is grateful to Dr Jane Maxwell for writing the Foreword to this volume. It also acknowledges the Library of Trinity College, the University of Dublin, which holds Dorothea’s original, illustrated manuscript, ‘Retrospections of an Outcast Or the Life of Dorothea Herbert’.

Carrick-on-Suir Development Committee (COSDA), May 2026