COULTER, Henry. The West of Ireland: its Existing Condition, and Prospects. Illustrated with thirty-four lithographic plates (some coloured) and one folding map.

Dublin: Hodges & Smith, 1862. pp. xii, 372, [36 (plates)], 20 (Adverts). Pebbled green cloth, title in gilt on spine, Hibernia and Britannia in gilt on upper cover and in blind on lower. Some light spotting to a few plates. Lacking the telegraph map, as usual. Spine professionally rebacked. Stamp of Patrick O Gorman Tullaroan, Kilkenny on front and rear flyleaves. A very good copy. Scarce.

Henry Coulter’s The West of Ireland: Its Existing Condition, and Prospects is an important nineteenth-century account of the social and economic conditions prevailing in the west of Ireland during the aftermath of the Great Famine. Based upon extensive personal observation, Coulter examines the lives of the rural population and the formidable problems facing communities struggling with poverty, agricultural hardship and the consequences of famine and emigration.

Particularly valuable for its contemporary descriptions, the work considers landholding, agriculture, employment, fisheries, housing and the possibilities for economic improvement across the western counties. Coulter’s observations provide a vivid insight into everyday life in post-Famine Ireland and into contemporary debates surrounding land reform, poverty and the future development of the country.

For historians and collectors of Irish local history, the Great Irish Famine, nineteenth-century Ireland and Irish social history, the book represents an important primary source. Its detailed observations are especially relevant to research into the history of the West of Ireland, rural society and the profound demographic and economic changes that followed the Famine.

[L3 11C]