BLAKE FAMILY: Letters from the Irish Highlands.

London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, Paternoster-row, 1825. Crown octavo. First edition. pp. xviii, [2], 359, [1]. Modern quarter calf on marbled boards, title in gilt on red morocco label on spine. Bibliographical note in ink on titlepage, signature of Anthony O’Flaherty, Knockbane, of front free endpaper, dated 1825. Rare.
COPAC locates 7 copies only. WorldCat 3.
One of the best contemporary accounts of social life in the West of Ireland by a member of The Tribes of Galway. Henry Blake and his English wife, Martha Louise bought Renvyle House where they farmed and ran a business. This work describes in a series of forty-nine letters: Emigration to the Highlands; Report of the Slate Quarry at Letterguesh; Explanation of Con Acre; Balance of Good and Evil in National Character; Industry of the Female Peasantry; Influence of the Priests; Climate of Cunnemarra; Herring Fishery; General Opposition to the Laws; Unequal Distribution of Justice; Clanship; Modesty of the Female Peasants; Boffin; etc. A feast of descriptive articles on social life in this most beautiful part of Ireland at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Attributed by Halkett and Laing to “Mrs. Henry Wood”.

[L3 11B & ? Sun R]