"A fascinating and absorbing account of how British travel writers contributed not only to the construction of Ireland as a particular place but how Ireland became a site for reinventing England." - Michael Cronin, Dublin City University, Ireland"
Review
"A fascinating and absorbing account of how British travel writers contributed not only to the construction of Ireland as a particular place but how Ireland became a site for reinventing England."—Michael Cronin, Dublin City University, Ireland
“This deeply researched and engaging study explores how anxieties over rapid social and economic change in Britain influenced travelers and commentators writing on Ireland in the pre-Famine era. British travelers found in Ireland a physical and social landscape that did not reflect their idealized visions of the English countryside, but instead consistently reinforced their conceptions of the neighboring island as different and backward. As depictions of Irish rural poverty came to dominate travel narratives, British conceptions of the Irish ‘moral landscape’ increasingly emphasized the innate deficiencies of the Irish character. In addition to a fascinating examination of travel writing in itself, this important book offers critical insight into the formation of what became the dominant British understanding of Irish society and poverty, a view that had a devastating influence on the popular and official response to the Great Famine.”—Michael de Nie, University of West Georgia
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