This chapter analyses progressive property theory in more detail, assessing the membership of that school of thought, the range of perspectives on the mediation of property rights and social justice that it captures, and its core themes and traits. It also addresses the property values that are captured in progressive property's pluralistic approach. These include efficiency, autonomy, and personhood. In doing so, the chapter signposts ideas about the relationship between property rights and social justice that influence Irish constitutional property law, in order to assist the reader in understanding the immanent, evolving, and often partial influence of property theory in the doctrine and outcomes of Irish constitutional property doctrine that are analysed in subsequent chapters. These values can help to explain the intuitive approach that is identifiable in much judicial reasoning in constitutional property law.

This chapter focuses on the early British reception of Ibsen. It begins with Edmund Gosse’s early initiatives and Ibsen’s introduction to the English-speaking world. The next phase involves a group of socialists and feminists who in the 1880s made Ibsen their own, including Eleanor Marx, Olive Schreiner and George Bernard Shaw. Towards the end of that decade Ibsen experienced surprising success in book form, not least through William Archer’s translations. His breakthrough on the British stage came in 1889 and was followed by a number of intense years with many productions and publications. One notable feature of Ibsen’s stage success was the strong involvement of a number of actresses, who even took on the stage-management of his plays, not least Janet Achurch, Elizabeth Robins and Marion Lea. The most notorious event involved the 1891 performance of Ghosts at the Independent Theatre and involved brushes with the censor, while the production of Hedda Gabler was celebrated as a critical success. After the fierce cultural battles over Ibsen in the early 1890s, a swift canonization followed. The last part of the chapter briefly charts Ibsen’s association with the independent theatre sector, his place within the commercial London theatre and key publishing ventures.