Review of Famine Literature

Famine Literature: A Selection:


(1) Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston, Granada, (1972)

(2) Douglas Hurd, Robert Peel: A Biography, Phoenix, (2007)

(3) Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, Abacus (1962)

(4) Paul Pickering, The People's Bread: A History of the Anti-Corn Law League, Leicester University Press, (2000)

(5) Dorothy Thompson, The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood House (1984)

(6) James Epstein and Dorothy Thompson, The Chartist Experience: Studies in Working Class Radicalism and Culture, Macmillan (1982)

(7) E. P. Thomson, The Making of the English Working Classes, Penguin (1963)

(8) J.C. Beckett, The Making of Modern Ireland, 1603-1923, Faber (1966)

(9) Patrick O' Donnell, The Irish Faction Fighters of the 19th Century, Anvil Books, (1975)

(10) Susan Campbell Bartoletti, The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston (2001)

(11) Jeremiah O' Donovan Rossa, Rossa's Recollections, 1838-1898: Memoirs of an Irish Revolutionary, Lyons Press (2004)

(12) Steve Garner, Racism in the Irish Experience, Pluto Press, (2004)

(13) Michelle O' Mahony, Famine in Cork City: Famine Life at Cork Union Workhouse, Mercier Press, (2005)

(14) Robert Kee, The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism, Penguin, (1972)

(15) Douglas Kanter, The Making of British Unionism, 1740-1848: Politics, Government and the Anglo-Irish Constitutional Relationship, Four Courts Press, (2009)

(16) Mike Rapport, 1848: Year of Revolution, Abacus, (2008)

(17) William Carleton, Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry [First published in 23 parts 1842-44]

".. only Carleton, born and bred a peasant, was able to give us a vast multitude of grotesque, pathetic, humorous persons, misers, pig-drivers, drunkards, schoolmasters, labourers, priests, madmen, and to fill them all with abounding vitality. He was but half articulate, half emerged from Mother earth, like one of Milton's lions, but hius wild Celtic melancholy, gives to whole pages of 'Fardorougha' and 'The Black Prophet' an almost spiritual grandeur. The forms of life he described passed away with the great famine, but the substance which filled those forms is the substance of Irish life, and will flow into new forms which will resemble them as one wave of the sea resembles another. In future times men will recognise that at his best he was a true historian, the peasant Chaucer of a new tradition, and that at his worst he fell into melodrama, more from imperfect criticism, than from imperfect inspiration. In his time only a little of Irish history, Irish poetry, Irish folklore had been got into the English language; he had to dig the marble for his statue out of the mountain side with his own hands and the statue shows not seldom the clumsy chisselling of the quarryman. "
                        - W. B. Yeats

(18) Colm Kerrigan, Father Mathew and the Irish Temperance Movement, 1838-1849, Cork University Press (1992)

(19) Aidan Hegarty, John Mitchel: A Cause Too Many, Camlane Press, (2005)

(20) John Kelly, The Graves are Walking, Henry Holt, (2012)

(21) D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (3rd ed), Routledge, (1995)

(22) Phillip Bull, Land, Politics and Nationalism: A Study of the Irish Land Question, Gill and Macmillan, (1996)

(23) Ian McBride, Eighteenth Century Ireland: The Isle of Slaves, Gill and Macmillan, (2009)

(24) Ciarán Brady, Interpreting Irish History: The Debate on Historical Revisionism, Irish Academic Press, (2004)

(25) Séan Cronin, Irish Nationalism: A History of its Roots and Ideology, The Academy Press, Dublin, (1980)

(26) Harriet Martineau, Letters from Ireland, Irish Academic Press, (2001)

(27) Peter Duffy, The Killing of Major Denis Mahon, Harper Collins, (2007)

(28) Tom Hayden (ed), Irish Hunger: Personal Reflections on the Legacy of Famine, Roberts Rinehards Publishers, (1997)

(29) George Cusack and Sarah Goss (eds), Hungry Words: Images of Famine in the Irish Canon, Irish Academic Press, (2006)

(30) Paul E.H. Davis, From Castle Rackrent to Castle Dracula: Anglo-Irish Agrarian Fiction from the 19th Century, University of Buckingham Press, (2011)

(31) Carla King (ed), Famine, Land and Culture in Ireland, (2001)

(32) Gerard MacAtasney, The Other Famine: The 1822 Crisis in County Leitrim, The History Press Ireland (2011)

(33) James Fintan Lalor, Collected Writings, Woodstock, (1997)

(34) Thomas Kenealy, Three Famines: Starvation and Politics, Public Affairs, New York, (2011)

(35) Thomas Kenealy, The Great Shame, London: Vintage Books, (1999)

(36) Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, New York, Routledge, (1995)

(37) Thomas Gallagher, Paddy's Lament: Ireland, 1846-47, Prelude to Hatred, Swords, Poolbeg, (1988)

(38) Tim Pat Coogan, The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy, Palgrave Macmillan (2012)

(39) Tim Pat Coogan, Wherever Green is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora, London, Arrow, (2002)

(40) Enda Delaney, The Curse of Reason: The Great Irish Famine, Gill and Macmillan (2012)

(41) Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger: Ireland, 1845-1849, London, Hamish Hamilton, (1962)
.
(42) W.E. Vaughan (ed), A New History of Ireland, Vol.v: Ireland Under the Union, 1801-1870, Oxford, Clarendon Press, (1989)

(43) Colm Toibín and Diarmaid Ferriter, The Irish Famine: A Documentary History, London , Profile Books, (2001)

(44) Robert Sloan, William Smith O' Brien and the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848: The Road to Balingarry, Dublin, Four Courts Press, (2000).

(45) Robert James Scally, The End of Hidden Ireland, Rebellion, Famine and Emigration, New York, Oxford University Press (1995)

(46) John. M. Prest, Lord John Russell, London, Macmillan, (1972)

(47) Cathal Póirtéir, (ed), The Great Irish Famine (Thomas Davis Lecture Series), Mercier Press in association with RTÉ, (1995)

(48) Cathal Póirtéir, (ed), Famine Echoes, Dublin, Gill and Macmillan (1995)

(49) Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, Ireland Before the Famine, 1798-1848, Dublin, Gill and Macmillan (1971)

(50) Ciarán Ó Murchadha, The Great Famine: Ireland's Agony, 1845-52, London and New York, Continuum, (2011)

(51) John O' Rourke, The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847: With Notices of Earlier Irish Famines (3rd ed) [1874] Dublin, James Duffy, (1902)

(51) Cormac Ó Grada, Ireland's Great Famine: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Dublin, UCD Press, (2006)

(52) Cormac Ó Grada, The Great Irish Famine, London, MacMillan, (1989)

(53) Cormac Ó Grada, Famine: A Short History, Princeton university Press, (2009)

(54) Cormac Ó Grada, Black '47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy and Memory, Princeton University Press (1999)

(55) Asenath Nicolson (ed. Maureen Murphy), Annals of the Famine in Ireland [1851], Dublin, Lilliput Press, (1998).

(56) David P. Nally, Human Encumbrances: Political Violence and the Great Irish Famine, University of Notre Dame Press, (2001)

(57) Chris Morash and Richard Hayes (eds), Fearful Realities: New Perspectives on the Famine, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, (2009).

(58) Joel Mokyr, Why Ireland Starved: A Quantitative and Analytical History of the Irish Economy, 1800-1850 (2nd ed), London: Allen and Unwin, (1985).

(59) John Mitchel, Jail Journal, or Five Years in British Prisons, New York, P. M. Haverty, (1854)

(60) John Mitchel, The History of Ireland: From the Treaty of Limerick to the Present Time (2 Vols), Dublin, James Duffy, (1869)

(61) John Mitchel, The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps), Author's Edition [1861]

(62) Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America, New York, Oxford University Press, (1985)

(63) Oliver McDonagh, The Life of Daniel O' Connell, 1775-1847, London, Wiedenfield and Nicolson, (1991)

(64) F.S. L. Lyons, Ireland since the Famine, London: Wiedenfield and Nicholson, (1971)

(65) Christine Kinealy, This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine, 1845-52, Dublin, Gill and McMillan, (2002)

(66) Christine Kinealy, The Great Irish Famine: Impact, Ideology and Rebellion, Palgrave (2002)

(67) Christine Kinealy, Repeal and Revolution: 1848 in Ireland, Manchester University Press (2009)

(68) Christine Kinealy, A Death-Dealing Famine: The Great Hunger in Ireland, London, Pluto Press, (1997)

(69) John Killen (ed), The Famine Decade: Contemporary Accounts, 1841-1851, Belfast, Blackstaff Press, (1995)

(70) Donal A. Kerr, 'A Nation of Beggars'?, Priests, People and Politics in Famine Ireland, 1846-1852, Oxford, Clarendon Press, (1994).

(71) Robin Haines, Charles Trevelyan and the Great Irish Famine, Dublin, Four Courts Press, (2004)

(72) Peter Gray, The Irish Famine, London, Thames and Hudson (1995)

(73) Peter Gray, Famine, Land and Politics: British Government and Irish Society, 1843-1850, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, (1999).

(74) Patrick Geoghegan, Liberator: The Life and Death of Daniel O' Connell, 1830-1847, Dublin, Gill and MacMillan (2010)

(75) Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Modern World, London, Verso, (2001)

(76) Roy Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600-1972, London: Allen Lane, (1988)

(77) Melissa Fagan, Literature and the Irish Famine, 1845-1919, Oxford, Clarendon Press (2002)

(78) Charles Gavan Duffy, Four Years of Irish History, 1845-49: A Sequel to Young Ireland, London, Paris, New York: Cassell, Petter, Galpin (1883)

(79) David Dickson, Arctic Ireland: The Extraordinary Story of the Great Frost and Forgotten Famine of 1740-41, Belfast, White Row Press,(1997)

(80) Michael de Nie, The Eternal Paddy: Irish Identity and the British Press, 1798-1882, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, (2004).

(81) R. Dudley Edwards and T. Desmond Williams (eds), The Great Famine: Studies in Irish History, 1845-52, Dublin, Browne and Nolan, (1956)

(82) John Crowley, et al. (eds), Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, Cork University Press (2012)

(83) Mary E. Daly, The Famine in Ireland, Dundalgan Press (1986)

(84) James S. Donnelly Jr., The Great Irish Potato Famine, Stroud (Glos): Sutton (2001)

(85) William Dillon, The Life of John Mitchel (2 Vols), London: Kegan Paul, Trench (1888)

(86) Charles Edward Trevelyan, The Irish Crisis, Longmans (1848)

"... but the only hope for those who lived upon potatos was for some great intervention of Providence to bring back the potato to it's original use and intention as an adjunct, and not as a principal article of national food.. " (pg.8)

"One half of the surface of Ireland is said to be let off in perpetuity leases, with derivative and sub-derivative interests in an endless chain, so as to obtain profit rents at each stage; and these leases are often open to the additional objection that they are unnecessarily burthensome or uncertain from the particular mode in which they are made; such as "leases for lives renewable forever by the insertion of other names when the first named are dead" or "for three lives or thirty one years" and "for three lives and thirty one years". Many proposals have at different times been made for the redemption of these various interests; but an arbitrary interference with the rights of property is to be avoided, and our object should be to give every prudent facility for the voluntary transfer of land and of the various interests connected with it, which must lead, by a safe and certain gradation to that degree of improvement of the existing tenures which is necessary for the encouragement of agriculture." (pg.24)

"In Mayo and other western counties the old barbarous Irish tenure called Rundale (Scotch runrigg), still prevails, which stops short of individual property, and by making the industrious and thriving responsible for the shortcomings of the idle and improvident, effectually desroys the spring of all improvement". (pg.25)

"Thousands upon thousands were pressed upon the officers of the Board of Works and it was impossible for those officers to test the accuracy of the represenations being made to them. The attraction of money wages regularly paid from the public purse, or the Queen's pay, as it was popularly called, led to a general abandonment in other descriptions of industry, in order to participate in the advantages of the Relief Works. Landlords competed with each other in getting the names of their tenants placed on the lists; farmers dismissed their labourers and sent them on to the works, the clergy insisted on the claims of their respective congregations, the fisheries were deserted,  and it was often difficult to get a coat patched or a shoe mended such had been the extent that the population of the south and west of Ireland had turned out upon the roads. The average number employed in October was 114,000; in November 285,000, in December 440,000 and in January, 1847, 570,000. It was impossible to exact from such multitudes a degree of labour which would act a test of destitution. Huddled together in masses they contributed to each other's idleness, and there were no means of knowing who did a fair proportion of work and who did not. The general enforcement of the system of task work had been justly considered necessary to stimulate the industry of the labourers on the Relief Works, but when this point had been carried, after a hard struggle, the old abuse reappeared in the aggravated form of an habitual collusion between the labourers and the overseers who were appointed to supervise their work; so that the labourers, if they could be so called, were not only as idle as ever, but were even enabled withal to enjoy a rate of wages which ought only to have the reward of superior industry. " (pgs 61-62)

"The price of Indian corn, which in the middle of February [1847] had been 19l. a ton, was reduced at the end of March to 13l. a ton, and at the end of August to 7l. 10s.a ton .. It may safely be asserted that these results would not have been obtained, if the great body of our English and Irish merchants and shipowners, instead of having free scope given to their exertions, had been left under the discouraging impression that all their calculations might have been upset by the sudden appearance in the foreign market, of Government vessels and Government orders for supply." (pg.74)

"In 1846-47 on the contrary, the scarcity was general, extending all over western Europe, and threatening a famine in other quarters besides Ireland. The present question therefore was not a money, but a food question." (pg 81)

"This was the second occasion (Soup Kitchen Act 1847 following on from the Labour Rate Act 1846)
on which upwards of three million had been fed "out of the hands of the magistrate" but this time it was effectual. The Relief Works had been crowded with persons who had other means of subsistence, to the exclusion of the really destitute, but a ration of cooked food proved less attractive than full money wages, and room was thus made for the helpless portion of the community. The famine was stayed. The "affecting and heart-rending crowds of destitutes" disappeared from the streets, the cadaverous, hunger stricken countenances of the people gave place to looks of health; deaths from starvation ceased; and cattle-stealing, plundering provisions and other crimes prompted by want of food were diminished in the space of a month." (p.89)

"Hitherto our narrative has been confined to what was done by the government, but the voluntary exertions of private individuals contributed their full share towards this unprecedented act of public charity" (pg 114)

"In India, society is based on a system of smallholdings and there is no country in which destructive famines have been more common. In Ireland itself, the greatest over-population and consequently the greatest distress, prevailed in those districts in which, owing to the existence of long leases, the landlords had no power to prevent the subdivision of land. Mere security of tenure is of no avail, without the capital and skill and habits of life and above all the wholesome moral qualities required to turn this advantage to good account." (p.176)

"The deep and inveterate root of social evil remained and this has been laid bare by a direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence, as if this part of the case were beyond the unassisted power of man. Innumerable had been the specifics which the wit of man had devised, but even the idea of the sharp but effectual, remedy by which the cure is likely to be effected had never occurred to anyone. God grant that the generation to which this great opportunity has been offered, may rightly perform its part and we may not relax our efforts until Irealnd fully participates in the social health and physical prosperity of Great Britain, which will be the true consummation of their Union." (pg. 201)

Fam Chron 46

Aug 1 Trev new memorandum detailing new scheme which was to be adopted.
Aug 3 "It is possible to have heard the tale of sorrow too often" - Times lead-writer declared.
Aug 7 Fr. Matthew, the apostle of temeprance wrote to Trev; ' the capitalists in the flour and corn trade are endeavouring to induce gov not to protect people from famine but to leave them at their mercy.'
Aug 17 "the prosepct of the potato crop is even more distressing than last year" - Russell in the house introducing the new Labour Rate Act. (1) Cost was to be met in it's entirety by the distrcits effected. Money would be advanced by the treasury at a rate of 3.5 % interest and repayed by a levy on all poor rate payers in the district.  'Presentment sessions of ratepayers would be held as before but no longer volounbtary but called upon by the lord lieutenant. £50,000 in free grants was to be spent on those districts too poor to pay the rates. [50,000 to feed a starving people! exclaimed Archbishop John Machale, reminding Russell that twenty millions had been spent freeing the negroes of the West Indies.] (2) the gov assured everyone it would not import or supply any food. There would be no gov depots to sell meal at low cost or in emergency to issue free meal as had been done last season. Merchants sought and received assurances from gov that no meal would be purchased  by them. Charles Wood (C of Ex) said the gov was pledged ' not to interfere with the regular mode by which Indian corn and other grains were brought into the country' but to leave that trade as much liberty as possible. Once wages were paid on the new public works the conviction was that food would be made available by profit-seeking merchants. (3) Ireland west of the Shannon was to be excluded from this ban on gov depots.
Aug 25 Routh travelled to England to meet Trv and Wood with a view to get them to buy up large quantities of food. An official dispatch was sent to Baring's looking for 2,000 tons of Indian corn. The merchant house declined but recommended a corn-factor, Mr. Erichsen. Euro harvest of 1846 was 'wholly or partially a failure'.
Aug 28 Labour Rate Act received the royal assent
Aug 28 Erichsen's reports impossible to buy up Indian corn; merchants were eagerly buying it up for the Irish market as well as French and Belgians for their own.
Aug 28 200-300 men marching to Lord Crofton's seat in Mote Park, Roscommon were dispersed by two troops of Dragoons.
Aug 31 Capt Perceval, Com off at Westport wrote the 'subjection of the masses were extraordinary' ( they truned blindly to authorities for salvation writes)C WSmith) large and orderly body of people actually kneeled before Lord Sligo
Sept 2 Terv to Stephen Spring Rice, Lord Monteagle's son; the object of the act was to force Irish landlord's to do compulsorily what they failed to do voluntarily, relieve distress in their districts. "the bacwardness of the landlords had made compulsory measures inevitable" Rushed through in ten dsys when most Irish members were away, enough to make a man turn Repealer Rice replied. Palmerston ; the lamdlords will be as well qualified as their cottiers to seek admission into the workhouse if the act were to stay in effect for any length of time.
Sept 4 Presentment sessions began under the act.
Sept 17 Trev instructs Erichsen to purchase 5000 quarters of Indian corn for the West of Ireland but all he could secure was 1,000 quarters. HUndredweight (cwt) is 112 pounds, a ton is 2240 pounds, a quarter is 28 pounds, a stone 14 pounds. So twenty hundreweight in a ton and 80 quaters in a ton. Tev wanted Er to buyat 40s a qrt when Indian corn was selling in Sligo at 50s a qrt
Sept 22 - .large sums are voted at baronial sessions as though there were no such thing as repayment' wrote the Times. Burden of repayment was distributed among all ratepayers, no money was required up front and thus an orgy of works were proposed and ratified.
Oct 13 Indian corn reached 54 s a qrt on London market and even at that price was unobtainable. [At 56 shillings a qrt of grain = 2 shillings a pound (28 pounds in a quarter). Woodhanm moith's qurtaers are actually quarter tons!! -  [Edit - http://www.victorianweb.org/history/work/nelson1.html]