The Irish Famine: A Documentary - Hardcover

Toibin, Colm; Ferriter, Diarmaid

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312300514 ISBN 13: 9780312300517

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books, 2002

Synopsis

The Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s has been popularly perceived as a genocide attributable to the British government. In professional historical circles, however, such singular thinking was dismissed many years ago, as evidenced by the scathing academic response to Cecil Woodham-Smith's 1963 classic, The Great Hunger, which, in addition to presenting a vivid and horrifying picture of the human suffering, made strong accusations against the British government's failure to act.

And while British governmental sins of omission and commission during the famine played their part, there is a broader context of land agitation and regional influences of class conflict within Ireland that also contributed to the starvation of more than a million people.

This remarkable book opens a door to understanding all sides to this tragedy with an absorbing history provided by novelist Colm Toibin that is supported by a collection of key documents selected by historian Diarmaid Ferriter. An important piece of revisionist thinking, The Irish Famine: A Documentary is sure to become the classic primer for this lamentable period of Irish history.

About this title

About the Author

Colm Tóibín is the author of four novels (The Blackwater Lightship was shortlisted for the Booker Prize) and is currently a Fellow of the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Diarmaid Ferriter received his Ph.D. in modern Irish history from the National University of Ireland. He is the author of two histories of Ireland and lectures at St. Patrick's College, Dublin City University.

From Library Journal

Novelist Toibin (Blackwater Lightship) and historian and lecturer Ferriter (Dublin City Univ.) have edited and annotated a collection of letters, news reports, editorials, and statistics gathered from primary and published materials about the Irish famine of 1846-48. Contrary to a thesis first introduced in Cecil Woodham-Smith's The Great Hunger (1963), the editors argue that the famine was self-inflicted, shifting blame from the British government to Irish landowners and merchants, who aggravated the distress and profited from it. But this work further accuses historians of ignoring the role of class in the famine. Trying also to provide a study of Victorian language and psyche, the editors juxtapose death tolls and horror stories from the provinces with castigations of the indolent Irish and recipes for cooking rotten potatoes. Having written just 38 pages of narrative, the editors advance their argument using the words of famine eyewitnesses and contemporaries. Some of the excerpts are exceptional, and the concept is powerful, but as a result of the unconventional approach the selections look random and unstructured. Large academic collections will find this title an interesting exercise in alternative scholarly editing. Robert Moore, Bristol-Myers Squibb Medical Imaging, Billerica, MA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0312300514
• ISBN 13: 9780312300517
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224