"Henry O’Neill is best known as an artist, archaeologist, publisher and polemicist as seen through his various books - The Sculptured Crosses of Ancient Ireland, Ireland for the Irish and The Round Towers of Ireland (Co. Dublin only). But they give a mere inkling of the impressive compendium of work that O'Neill produced throughout a long and active career spanning forty years and more. We find out a lot more through the sketch-books of his that survive, and realise what an incredible amount of travelling and sketching he did through his interest in castles or tower-houses, though he also covered a wide variety of other monuments from prehistoric times almost up to his own day. These sketch-books and note-books have fortunately been preserved in Glenstal Abbey. O’Neill must - along with Petrie, G.V. Du Noyer and W.F. Wakeman - be ranked very highly among Irish antiquarian artists of the late Georgian and Victorian periods, hence the need to restore his reputation in this volume