Periodical Famines
Irish Memories in Transatlantic News Media, 1845-1919
Published on 4. February 2025
Book
Hardback
338 pages
978-0-253-07189-7 (ISBN)
Description
Long recognized as Ireland's greatest demographic disaster in recent history, the Great Famine of 1845-1851 has shaped Irish identities around the world. From the monuments erected to commemorate its victims to the political rhetoric involving it to the novels, poems, songs, and films that it continues to inspire, the Famine remains a crucial part of Irish memory. Famine memories have also reached across history and national borders to establish links with cultural groups who were not directly connected to the Irish diaspora.
Periodical Famines reveals how, within the transatlantic Irish periodical market between 1845 and 1910, Irish, Irish American, and Irish Canadian newspapers and magazines acted as carriers and shapers of cultural identities. Lindsay Janssen argues that famine memory was deployed transhistorically to help represent other crucial events in the Irish past, and periodicals used Famine recollections transnationally to give new meaning to events outside of Ireland, such as labor issues in the United States and the Second Boer War. Moving beyond individual writings to interrogate how different texts printed within a periodical issue influenced each other and affected audiences' attitudes to Irish hunger and distress, Janssen's cotextual approach reveals the intricate and sometimes divergent paths that Famine memory traveled through in the decades during and after its onset.
Drawing upon a substantial corpus of creative and nonfiction periodical publications (including nearly 600 works of poetry and prose fiction), Periodical Famines is a thorough analysis of transatlantic Irish periodical culture during and after the Great Famine, demonstrating how periodicals' transmission of famine memories shaped global cultures.
Periodical Famines reveals how, within the transatlantic Irish periodical market between 1845 and 1910, Irish, Irish American, and Irish Canadian newspapers and magazines acted as carriers and shapers of cultural identities. Lindsay Janssen argues that famine memory was deployed transhistorically to help represent other crucial events in the Irish past, and periodicals used Famine recollections transnationally to give new meaning to events outside of Ireland, such as labor issues in the United States and the Second Boer War. Moving beyond individual writings to interrogate how different texts printed within a periodical issue influenced each other and affected audiences' attitudes to Irish hunger and distress, Janssen's cotextual approach reveals the intricate and sometimes divergent paths that Famine memory traveled through in the decades during and after its onset.
Drawing upon a substantial corpus of creative and nonfiction periodical publications (including nearly 600 works of poetry and prose fiction), Periodical Famines is a thorough analysis of transatlantic Irish periodical culture during and after the Great Famine, demonstrating how periodicals' transmission of famine memories shaped global cultures.
Reviews / Votes
"We have long known that Famine memories are rooted in materiality, without really grasping how serial publication created readers, and hence memories. Lindsay Janssen has given us an indispensable book for anyone for whom memory of the Irish Famine matters."-Christopher Morash, author of A History of the Media in IrelandMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Bloomington, IN
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
20 b&w illus., 1 b&w table
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Weight
590 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-253-07189-7 (9780253071897)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
02/2025
Indiana University Press
€43.99
Available for download
Person
Lindsay Janssen is Assistant Professor at the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at Radboud University. She is editor (with Marguerite Corporaal, Christopher Cusack, and Ruud van den Beuken) of Global Legacies of the Great Irish Famine: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Perspectives; (with Christian Noack and Vincent Comerford) of Holodomor and Gorta Mor: Histories, Memories and Representations of Famine in Ukraine and Ireland; and (with Marguerite Corporaal and Christopher Cusack) of Recollecting Hunger: An Anthology.
Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Section I: Transhistorical Connections
1. Famine Print Patterns
2. Famine and Temporal Stasis in a Story Paper: Young Ireland Magazine, 1875-88
3. Special Correspondence on Ireland in the Early 1880s: Current and Past Famines in Margaret Dixon McDougall's "A Tour through Ireland"
4. Famine, Fiction, and Historicity in The Irish Packet during the First Years of the Twentieth Century
Section II: Diasporic and Transnational Connections
5. "Famine, or Farms": McGee's Illustrated Weekly and the Betterment of the Poor Laborer's Lot, 1876-82
6. Humiliating the Nation: Imperial Oppression, Gender, and Hunger in Maud Gonne's Periodical Writings on Ireland and South Africa, 1898-1904
7. Imperialism versus Economic Progress: The Irish World and American Industrial Liberator and Robert Ellis Thompson on Famines in Ireland and India at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Conclusion: Travelling Irish Famine Memories in Transatlantic Periodical Culture
Appendix 1: Margaret Dixon McDougall, "A Tour Through Ireland," Daily Witness, April 16, 1881
Appendix 2: Margaret Dixon McDougall, "A Tour Through Ireland," Daily Witness, July 27, 1881
Appendix 3: Robert Ellis Thompson, "Free Trade Slays Millions," Irish World, February 20, 1897
Appendix 4: Chronological List of Creative Works which Contain Famine
Bibliography
Index
Introduction
Section I: Transhistorical Connections
1. Famine Print Patterns
2. Famine and Temporal Stasis in a Story Paper: Young Ireland Magazine, 1875-88
3. Special Correspondence on Ireland in the Early 1880s: Current and Past Famines in Margaret Dixon McDougall's "A Tour through Ireland"
4. Famine, Fiction, and Historicity in The Irish Packet during the First Years of the Twentieth Century
Section II: Diasporic and Transnational Connections
5. "Famine, or Farms": McGee's Illustrated Weekly and the Betterment of the Poor Laborer's Lot, 1876-82
6. Humiliating the Nation: Imperial Oppression, Gender, and Hunger in Maud Gonne's Periodical Writings on Ireland and South Africa, 1898-1904
7. Imperialism versus Economic Progress: The Irish World and American Industrial Liberator and Robert Ellis Thompson on Famines in Ireland and India at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Conclusion: Travelling Irish Famine Memories in Transatlantic Periodical Culture
Appendix 1: Margaret Dixon McDougall, "A Tour Through Ireland," Daily Witness, April 16, 1881
Appendix 2: Margaret Dixon McDougall, "A Tour Through Ireland," Daily Witness, July 27, 1881
Appendix 3: Robert Ellis Thompson, "Free Trade Slays Millions," Irish World, February 20, 1897
Appendix 4: Chronological List of Creative Works which Contain Famine
Bibliography
Index