We examine the stellar content of 10 dwarf irregular galaxies of which broad-band CCD photometry was published in Hopp & Schulte-Ladbeck ( 1995 ) .
We also present H _ { \alpha } images for several of these galaxies .
The galaxies in the sample are located outside of the Local Group .
Yet , they are still close enough to be resolved into single stars from the ground but only the brightest stars ( or star clusters ) are detected and there is severe crowding .
The sample galaxies were selected to be isolated from massive neighbors ; about half of them are ( mostly peripheral ) members of groups , the other half is located in the field .
We discuss the vicinity of the sample galaxies to other dwarf galaxies .

In order to interpret single-star photometry and draw conclusions about the stellar content or other distance-dependent quantities , it is crucial that accurate distances to the galaxies be known .
The distances to the sample galaxies are not well known since all but one have not had a primary distance indicator measured .
We make an attempt to constrain the distances by identifying the envelope of the brightest supergiants in B , B-R and R , B-R color-magnitude diagrams , but the results are not very accurate ( we estimate the minimal error on the distance modulus is 1.36 ^ { m } ) .
Nevertheless , the fact that the sample galaxies are resolved with direct ground-based imaging indicates that they are sufficiently nearby to represent good candidates for observations with instruments that provide high spatial resolution , e.g. , adaptive optics systems on large ground-based telescopes , or the Hubble Space Telescope .

We discuss the morphologies , color-magnitude diagrams and frequencies of the resolved stars together with the morphology of the ionized gas , as well as the surface brightness profiles and colors of the underlying light distributions of unresolved stars .
We point out the occurrence in half of the galaxies studied of HII regions and young stellar associations located well outside of the main body of resolved stars .
This appears to be in conflict with the hypothesis of self-propagating star-formation .
All of the sample galaxies contain HII regions and young massive stars with ages of a few Myr to around 10 Myr .
For supergiants beyond an age of about 50 Myr , incompleteness is already a problem in the single-star photometry .
However , we can also gain insight into the stellar content from the integrated colors of the unresolved stars .
The light distribution of the unresolved stars is more extended than that of the resolved stars and is of a more regular and elliptical shape .
We provide ellipticities , central surface brightnesses and scale lengths for the sample galaxies .
The background-light colors indicate a range of star-formation histories for the sample galaxies , with galaxy colors at one extreme being dominated by the old , metal-poor population , and at the other extreme , by the most recent star-birth event .
The results provide insight into the stellar content and the star-formation histories of isolated , late-type galaxies .