Philipp Blom (2008) has called the early twentieth century ‘the vertigo years’, reflecting the scale and velocity of social and cultural change. He observes in relation to the character of the period:

The social and cultural changes that Blom is describing reflect, as he recognises, deeper economic changes in a world that had been reshaped by industrialisation and globalisation. The world that was taking shape during the ‘vertigo years’ of the early twentieth century was dominated by reason in the form of science and technology and the revolutionary influence of modernism on art and literature. Change was in the air. New and revolutionary ideas and movements were bubbling to the surface. There were 332 domestic newspapers and news-sheets circulating in Ireland, informing an increasingly politicised public about a myriad of topics. This information revolution, which fanned a ‘demotic politics’ of ‘satire and subversion’, has been dubbed the ‘mosquito press’ (Foster, 2014: 150). But, for others, the relationship between this new modernist vision of the world and traditional society was conflictual and very challenging. Some sought reassurance in the ‘cult of unreason’, like the cultural fundamentalists and moral traditionalists of today.