This collaborative anthology was the work of a number of young writers who had gathered around John and Ellen O'Leary at the outset of the Irish Literary Revival, and who contributed to The Gael, of which O'Leary was the literary editor. Yeats described it as 'another link ... in the long chain of Irish song that united decade to decade', and it was a clear attempt by his generation to establish a national importance by assuming the prestigious mantle of the Young Irelanders of the 1840s. Of the poems in the anthology, five were by Douglas Hyde, later President of Ireland; four each by Yeats, John Todhunter and T.W.Rolleston; three each by Katharine Tynan, Rose Kavanagh, and Ellen O'Leary; two by F.J.Gregg; and one each by George Sigerson, Hester Sigerson, Charles Gregory Fagan, and George Noble Plunkett. The volume was widely reviewed and a later critic, M.J.Macmanus, claimed that its publication marked the beginning of the Irish Literary Revival.