Visionary geographies: designs for developing Ireland

Abstract

The painting 'The Plough and the Earth Spirit' by George William Russell (1867-1935) the prolific and influential poet, artist, agricultural adviser and political commentator, appeared as frontispiece of the Irish Review in 1913 (figure 1). Often known through his literary pseudonym SE, Russell was born in Lurgan to lower-middle-class parents who shared devotion to the Church of Ireland with support for nonconformism.1 He was working as a clerk in a Dublin drapery store, attending art classes and pursuing his literary and spiritual development, when he took up the cause of rural reform and the position of co-operative adviser in 1897. Leaving his theosophical commune he toured the countryside advising on systems of co-operative credit on behalf of the newly formed Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, until 1905 when he was appointed as editor of its weekly paper the Irish Homestead. Here he elaborated on the principles and philosophy of co-operation until the paper ceased publication in 1923. He described how the co-operative movement could change rural life, through the co-operative organization of village societies, libraries and cultural pursuits, could unite the countryside with the towns through a co-operative federation of rural and urban manufacturing and sale and could stop migration to the