‘“Like a wail from the tomb, / But of world-waking power”: James Clarence Mangan’s “A Vision: A. D. 1848”, The Great Famine and the Young Ireland Rising’

Published with the permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing.This book chapter discusses the poems of James Clarence Mangan

William Carleton, Folklore, the Famine, and the Irish Supernatural

This article examines the significance of the supernatural in the works of the nineteenth-century Irish author William Carleton, and in particular the ways in which his grounding in folklore and his reflection of the Great Famine are important in his work

The Great Famine in literature, 1846-1896

This is the author's accepted PDF version of an book chapter published in In Julia M. Wright (Ed.), A companion to Irish literature, volume one (pp. 444-459). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, © 2010.This book chapter examines the representation of the Great Famine in literary texts from 1846-1896, including novels and short stories by William Carleton, Margaret Brew, Louise Field, Emily Fox, Mary Anne Hoare, T. O'Neill Russell, Anthony Trollope and W. G. Wills, and poetry by Jane Francesca Wilde, Thomas D'Arcy McGee and James Clarence Mangan, among others

'That heartbroken island of incestuous hatred': Famine and family in Joseph O'Connor's Star of the Sea

This is the author's post-refereed, pre-print version of an article published by Rodopi, 2011, reproduced with kind permission from Koninklijke Brill.Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea (2002), uses an extended family – the Merridiths, Duanes and Mulveys – crossing class, religious, cultural, ethnic and political divides, to explore the failure of personal, local, national and international networks to save vulnerable individuals during the Great Famine of 1845-52

'Every Irishman is an Arab': James Clarence Mangan's Eastern 'Translations'

This is the accepted manuscript of an article published in Translation and Literature, Summer 2013, 22(2), pp. 195-214, http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/tal.2013.0113This article discusses James Clarence Mangan's ‘Literæ Orientales’, six articles he published in the Dublin University Magazine between 1837 and 1846

'This most humane commerce': Lace-making during the Famine

Fintan O’Toole includes a lace collar from Youghal, Co. Cork in his A History of Ireland in 100 Objects, noting it ‘epitomises one of the more remarkable achievements of Irish women in the second half of the nineteenth century – the creation from scratch of a world-class craft industry’. It was an industry largely founded in response to the Famine, by philanthropic upper- and middle-class Irish women who recognised the failure of famine relief measures for women and girls in particular; the Youghal lace collar is a legacy of the lace school founded there by a nun during the Famine. Lace-making offered rescue not just for them, but their families; in 1852, among fishing families in Blackrock, ‘the strong and powerful father’ and ‘the vigorous son’ were now ‘protected from hunger and misery by the fingers of the feeble child, and saved from the workhouse by her cheerful and untiring toil’. This chapter will examine the representation of textile and lace making during the Famine in texts such as Mary Anne Hoare’s ‘The Knitted Collar’, Susanna Meredith’s The Lacemakers, and Brother James’s Eva O’Beirne, or the Little Lacemaker, as narratives of self-help, critiques of inadequate state intervention, calls for support of the trade and charitable donations, and an impetus to emigration. It will also consider the relationship between depictions of mid-nineteenth-century Irish textile workers and the representation of seamstresses in Victorian literature more widely

How the Other Three-Quarters Lived: The Cabin in Famine Literature

In the 1841 census three-quarters of houses in Ireland were placed in the lowest two classes, one-roomed mud cabins and slightly larger mud cottages. What Harriet Martineau describes as ‘Irish cabin life’ was a matter of fascination for visitors to Ireland before and after the Famine, and the cabin became a key site of ethnographic exploration. Curious or philanthropic observers were either shocked by the poverty and wretchedness they saw, or puzzled or even offended by the seeming happiness and healthiness of cabin-dwellers. During the Famine, the cabin was a scene for tragedy and horror: the place from which the people were evicted, from which they emigrated, in which they were quarantined, where they were found dying or dead, where they were buried. The roofless cabin later eloquently attested to their suffering and absence, and has become one of the most significant visual icons in the commemoration of the Famine. This chapter examines the representation of the cabin in literature from the time of the Famine to the present day, in the works of authors such as William Carleton, Anthony Trollope, Margaret Brew, Carol Birch, Anne Enright, and Tana French, considering the ways in which social hierarchy and communal relations are mediated through its space in texts set during the Famine, and its spectral significance in modern and contemporary literature as a concrete or symbolic inheritance, a time-machine, a haunted house, a place to desecrate or take refuge in, and a crime scene

'Isn't it your own country?': The stranger in nineteenth-century Irish literature

Published version used with kind permission of Modern Humanities Research Association.This article discusses the nineteenth-century British obsession with travel in Ireland, and the representation of the stranger in three novels soon after the Union: Owenson's The Wild Irish Girl, Edgeworth's The Absentee, and Banim's The Anglo-Irish of the Nineteenth Century. These Irish writers use the stranger to expose misconception and urge reconciliation, but the stranger undergoes an evolution in their works, from English, to Anglo-Irish, to Irish — from colonizer coming to terms with the actions of his ancestors, to Anglo-Irish landlord taking responsibility for his land and tenants, to Irishman embracing his national identity and forging his own destiny.This article was submitted to the RAE2008 for the University of Chester - English Language & Literature

The Moral Economy of the Irish Hotel From the Union to the Famine

This chapter examines the peculiar characteristics of the Irish hotel in the period between the Act of Union and the Great Famine, when tourism was newly established in Ireland. The ‘moral economy’ of the inn or hotel was perceived as an extrapolation of that of the estate, or of Ireland itself. Viewed by many guests as primitive, lacking the neatness, cleanliness, and order they expected in British hotels, the Irish hotel functioned with double responsibilities: to the comfort of their guests, but also to the weal of the local community, providing work, relief, and begging opportunities for the poorest