for The Great Blight

Thoroughly researched account that paints a complete picture

A good book to read on the subject if you you're looking for a single text on the subject of the Irish Potato Famine. I do appreciate the technical and fact filled nature of Smith's writing. What it lacks in specific details on human suffering it makes up for with detailed accounts on the conditions and players that led to this tragedy. This book covers the political and cultural environments of the time as well as the greater effect the famine had on Ireland and the rest of the world. I came away from the book with a clearer picture of the relationship between Ireland and England, and a better understanding of the role each country (and their populations, press, government officials, landowners, farmers and royalty) played.

myshoes@worldnet.att.net from Seattle, WA
January 26, 1999

A detailed and heart-breaking history

One would be pressed to call "The Great Hunger" an easy read. Written in 1964, its style and dense recitation of facts can leave the reader mired in detail. Yet through the often thick prose comes a shocking tale of human disaster on an enormous scale. The near-total reliance of the Irish on the potato leads to calamity when that crop is destroyed by blight in the mid-1840's. Beholding to their landlords (many of them absentee), virtually penniless, they are swept into a vortex of helplessness and starvation. While local officials in Ireland realise with horror the consequences of the crop failure, government bureaucrats in London stubbornly insist it would be wrong to send massive food relief because it would undermine free enterprise. The author quotes extensively from numerous first hand accounts which graphically describe the suffering and despair of the Irish peasantry. The book however is not limited to the tragedy that took place in Ireland. Woodham-Smith relates how thousands of Irish, many of them ill with typhus, flee their homeland for North America. Many of the vessels are poorly equipped and provisioned, and their cargo is human misery. One of the most appalling chapters deals with the scene at Grosse Isle, Quebec, where a small fever hospital is overrun by sick and dying immigrants. At one point in the summer of 1847, dozens of ships are moored in the St. Lawrence River, waiting to discharge their gravely-ill passengers. The line of vessels stretches several miles. The deaths number in the thousands. This is just one of many compelling images which emerge from Woodham-Smith's history, and they more than compensate for the often complex and detailed way he presents his information. A worthwhile companion book to "The Great Hunger" is the novel "Away" by Jane Urquhart, which traces the journey of an Irish family from the Isle of Rathlin off the north coast of Ireland, to the Canadian province of Ontario, during the potato famine.

Paul Harrington (harringp@toronto.cbc.ca) from Toronto, Canada
January 24, 1999

A thoroughly appalling, if rather dry, story

In fall 1972 I was a student traveling around the British Isles with a backpack and a rail pass. Finding myself stuck in Dublin for several days, I bought a copy of this book to while away the time. Previously I'd known of the Potato Famine only as a blessing-in-disguise that drove some of my ancestors to America. This book is rather dry and statistical, but the story it tells is damning. The Potato Famine was traditionally blamed on the laziness of the Irish, who had grown dependent on a single, easy-to-grow crop. Woodham-Smith shows convincingly that the real villains were the British landlords, who were trying to squeeze the maximum profit out of their tenants, and the British government, who denied the magnitude of the problem until it could no longer be concealed and then blamed it on the victims. I found the book engrossing, read it through in a few days, and have reread it several times since. Although it seems short on "human interest," some of the stories the author tells (e.g., the account of famine victims in Skibbereen, Co. Cork) are almost too painful to bear. Perhaps it's just as well that she let the facts and figures speak for themselves; they're horrifying enough!

A reader from Santa Fe, NM
October 26, 1998