The impact of the Irish famine of 1845-1852 was unparalleled in both political and psychological terms. The effects of famine-related mortality and emigration were devastating, in the field of literature no less than in other areas. In this incisive new study, Melissa Fegan explores the famine's legacy to literature, tracing it in the work of contemporary writers and their successors, down to 1919. Dr Fegan examines both fiction and non-fiction, including journalism, travel-narratives and the Irish novels of Anthony Trollope. She argues that an examination of famine literature that simply categorizes it as 'minor' or views it only as a silence or an absence misses the very real contribution that it makes to our understanding of the period. This is an important contribution to the study of Irish history and literature, sharply illuminating contemporary Irish mentalities.

The Famine Diaspora and Irish American Women’s Writing considers the works of eleven North American female authors who wrote for or descended from the Irish Famine generation: Anna Dorsey, Christine Faber, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Mother Jones, Kate Kennedy, Margaret Dixon McDougall, Mary Meaney, Alice Nolan, Fanny Parnell, Mary Anne Sadlier, and Elizabeth Hely Walshe. This collection examines the ways the writings of these women contributed significantly to the construction of Irish North-American identities, and played a crucial role in the dissemination of Famine memories transgenerationally as well as transnationally. The included annotated excerpts from these women writers’ works and the accompanying essays by prominent international scholars offer insights on the sociopolitical position of the Irish in North America, their connections with the homeland, women’s activities in transnational (often Catholic) publishing networks and women writers’ mediation of Ireland’s cultural heritage. Furthermore, the volume illustrates the generic variety of Irish American women’s writing of the Famine generation, which comprises political treatises, novels, short stories and poetry, and bears witness to these female authors’ profound engagement with political and social issues, such as the conditions of the poor and woman’s vote.