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Product Description
Published by Dundalgan Press, this is the first printing, 1986 of Mary Daly's The Famine in Ireland , published by the historical Association of Ireland under the editorship of Art Cosgrove.
Rather surprisingly, given the huge role that the famine played in rish history, this book was one of the first modern studies of the Irish Famine , apart from The Great Hunger - Cecil Woodham Smith ( 1962) and Edwards and Williams The Great Famine ( 1956) . The book is not a comprehensive history of the famine, but rather an attempt to show how and why it was so devastating - how potato cultivation held such a central role, how the society was thus on a knife edge if the crop failed, and how widespread rural poverty was unchecked in the period leading up to 1845. Land ownership, lack of industry, poor standards of living, land division and a population forced onto increasingly marginal land all played a role, as did a wholly inadequate government response, and the passing of the crisis to a Poor Law structure that was unable to cope.
A hugely important book, that despite much recent research, is still a standard work on the period.
Uneven sunfade to spine, otherwise a sold copy.
