Goddard Henry Orpen

Who was Goddard Henry Orpen?

Goddard Henry Orpen was an Irish historian. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin.

Orpen was the son of Dr. John Herbert Orpen and Ellen Susanna Gertude Richards and a second cousin of Sir William Orpen.

Orpen's main work was Ireland under the Normans, a four-volume work of a total of c. 1500 pages, first published by Clarendon Press 1911-20, and then reissued in 1968. Ireland under the Normans generated political controversy when it was published, as Orpen "affronted many fellow Irishmen with his contrast between Ireland’s ‘progress, vigour and comparative order’ under Anglo-Norman rule, and ‘retrogression, stagnation, and comparative anarchy’ under ‘the recrudescence of Celtic tribalism’ in the two centuries after 1333". A new one-volume edition was published by Four Courts Press in 2005.

Orpen also edited and translated The Song of Dermot and the Earl in 1892.

Orpen died at Monksgrange, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, in 15 May 1932.