The first chapter, by editor Christine Kinealy, is entitled ‘'Never Call Me a Novelist' ’: Cecil Woodham-Smith and The Great Hunger ’, and accurately asserts that this stimulating and poignant book ‘retains a freshness and energy that belies its age’.

Woodham-Smith's classic account of ‘The Great Hunger’ introduced me as a sixth former to this appalling tragedy.

The first of a dozen appended images is a photograph of Cecil Woodham-Smith receiving an Honorary Doctorate. Little attention, they insist, has been given to ‘the diverse roles played by women as landowners, relief-givers, philanthropists, proselytisers and providers for the family’.ĭrawing on folklore and popular culture as well as more traditional sources, this publication ‘examines the diverse and still largely unexplored role of women during the Great Hunger, shedding light on how women experienced and shaped the tragedy that unfolded in Ireland between 18’. They make it clear at the outset that ‘even considering recent advances in the development of women’s studies as a discipline, women remain underrepresented in the history and historiography of the Great Hunger’. The seventeen editors and authors contributing to this groundbreaking study include some of the leading researchers in Irish studies, offering new scholarship, methodologies and perspectives on this immense tragedy and its multiple legacies. Women and the Great Hunger, Christine Kinealy, Jason King and Ciaran Reilly, Cork University Press, 2017, paperback, 236 pp., £21.95, ISBN 97809909454

Woodham smith the great hunger