This book addresses perceived lacunae in the historiography of the Land War in late nineteenth-century Ireland, particularly deficiencies or omissions relating to the themes of the title: famine, humanitarianism, and the activities of agrarian secret societies, commonly referred to as Moonlighting. The famine that afflicted the country in 1879-80, one generation removed from the catastrophic Great Famine of the 1840s, prompted different social responses. The wealthier sectors of society, their consciousness and humanitarianism awakened, provided the bulk of the financial and administrative support for the famine-stricken peasantry. Others, drawn from the same broad social stratum as the latter, vented their anger and frustration on the government and the landlords, whom they blamed for the crisis. The concern of marginal men and women for the welfare of their less fortunate brethren was not so much the antithesis of altruism, as a different, more rudimentary way of expressing it.The volume's opening chapter introduces the famine that tormented Ireland's Atlantic seaboard counties in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The four chapters that follow develop the famine theme, concentrating on the role of civic and religious relief agencies, and the local and international humanitarian response to appeals for assistance. The 1879-80 famine kindled benevolence among the diasporic Irish and the charitable worldwide, but it also provoked a more primal reaction, and the book's two closing chapters are devoted to the activities of secret societies. The first features the incongruously named Royal Irish Republic, a neo-Fenian combination in north-west County Cork. The volume's concluding essay links history and literature, positing a connection between agrarian secret society activity during the Land War years and the Kerry playwright George Fitzmaurice's neglected 1914 drama The Moonlighter. This original and engaging work makes a significant contribution to our understanding of modern Irish history and literature.

In this illuminating social history of medicine and charity in Ireland over almost 150 years from 1718 until just after the Great Famine, Laurence M. Geary shows how illness and poverty reacted upon each other. The poverty resulting from great population growth that continued until the arrival of potato blight in 1845 had a severe effect on the health of the country's population, and the Famine itself caused around one million deaths from starvation and disease. This was a period of great change in medical and charitable services. In the eighteenth century the sick had come to be regarded as the deserving poor, therefore having a better claim to public assistance than those whose poverty was the result of their own dissipation, idleness or vice. A network of charities evolved in Ireland to provide free medical aid to the sick poor. The first voluntary hospital in Dublin opened in 1718 and Geary traces the establishment and development of voluntary hospitals and county infirmaries throughout the country. These had a strong Anglican ethos and bias, but after Catholic emancipation in 1829 the nepotism, sectarianism and divisive politics that were rife in these organisations came under increasing scrutiny. Medical practitioners saw considerable progress in the development of a regulated profession. Geary describes developments in policy making and legislation, culminating in the 1851 Medical Charities Act, which he describes as part of a process that characterised the century and more under review in this book: the unrelenting pressure on philanthropy and private medical charity and the inexorable shift from voluntarism to an embryonic system of state medicine.

In this illuminating social history of medicine and charity in Ireland over almost 150 years from 1718 until just after the Great Famine, Laurence M. Geary shows how illness and poverty reacted upon each other. The poverty resulting from great population growth that continued until the arrival of potato blight in 1845 had a severe effect on the health of the country's population, and the Famine itself caused around one million deaths from starvation and disease. This was a period of great change in medical and charitable services. In the eighteenth century the sick had come to be regarded as the deserving poor, therefore having a better claim to public assistance than those whose poverty was the result of their own dissipation, idleness or vice. A network of charities evolved in Ireland to provide free medical aid to the sick poor. The first voluntary hospital in Dublin opened in 1718 and Geary traces the establishment and development of voluntary hospitals and county infirmaries throughout the country. These had a strong Anglican ethos and bias, but after Catholic emancipation in 1829 the nepotism, sectarianism and divisive politics that were rife in these organisations came under increasing scrutiny. Medical practitioners saw considerable progress in the development of a regulated profession. Geary describes developments in policy making and legislation, culminating in the 1851 Medical Charities Act, which he describes as part of a process that characterised the century and more under review in this book: the unrelenting pressure on philanthropy and private medical charity and the inexorable shift from voluntarism to an embryonic system of state medicine.

Interest in nineteenth-century studies has never been greater, and contrasts sharply with previous neglect of many aspects of that century's history and culture. These essays by leading scholars assess and interpret developments from 1990 onwards in the field of nineteenth-century Irish studies, and from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. The book covers political, social, religious and women's history and historical geography as well as anthropological and sociological studies of nineteenth-century Ireland. Further chapters cover nineteenth-century music, art history, literature in English, Gaelic culture and language and the Irish diaspora. This will be an invaluable research tool and reference book for many years to come.

Contents of this volume, the fifth in a series focusing on 19th-century Ireland include: 'The Irish password is no longer repeal but revolution': a German view of Ireland's 1848: Brigitte Anton; Revolution from the bottom up: street balladry and memory: Maura Cronin; Sectarianism in 1798 and in Catholic nationalist memory: James S. Donnelly, Jr; Resistance and rebellion in the Gaelic literary tradition from 1798 to 1848: Tom Dunne; Voicing rebellion in Victorian fiction: Nell McCaw; 'New light' Ulster Presbyterianism and the nationalist rhetoric of John Mitchel: Robert Mahony; The nationalist monuments at Cork and Skibbereen: Orlaith Mannion; The United Irish threat to early colonial Australia: Ruan O'Donnell; Presence and absence of Wolfe Tone during the centenary commemoration of the 1798 rebellion: Sophie Ollivier; Three narratives of rural insurgency post-1798: Tadgh O'Sullivan; Popular mobilisation and the rising of 1848: the clubs of the Irish Confederation: Gary Owens; Representations of Irish history in fiction films made prior to the 1916 Rising: Kevin Rockett; Young Ireland and the 1798 rebellion: Sean Ryder; The sepulchral nationalism of the Australasian 1798 commemoration: J. Wooding.