Personal lives: narrative accounts of Irish women in the diaspora

The burst of writing about Irish women in the diaspora after the 1980s, led by Mary Lennon, Marie McAdam and Joanne O'Brien's Across the Water: Irish Women's Lives in Britain, coincided with the ‘narrative turn’ in the social sciences and literary representation. This paper uses Carol Smart's concepts of Personal Life (2007) – memory, biography, embeddedness, relationality and the imaginary – to examine a range of ways in which personal narratives have become central to our understandings of Irish women and their descendants in both written and visual representations. It interweaves disciplines, bringing together a wide range of sources including academic and public accounts in which Irish women appear both as main characters and in walk-on parts. It explores constructions of these ‘fictions’ and their connections with the biographies of authors.     

Weather Folk-Lore of the Sea

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CXTLTES, MYTHES, ET RELIGIONS. Par SAL. REINACH, Membre de l'Institut Vol. I. Paris: E. Leroux 1905. Reviewed by Alfred Nutt.

DES DIVINITÉS GÉNÉRATRICES, OU DU CULTE DU PHALLUS CHEZ LES ANCIENS ET LES MODERN ES. BY J. A. DULAURE. Paris: Societé du Mercure de France, 1905. Reviewed by E. Sidney Hartland.

CRYSTAL-GAZING : ITS HISTORY AND PRACTICE, WITH A DISCUSSION OF THE EVIDENCE FOR TELEPATHIC SCRYING. With an Introduction by ANDREW LANG, M.A., LL.D. By NORTHCOTE W. THOMAS, M.A. Alexander Moring Limited. 1905. Reviewed by Edward Clodd.

VOTIVE WEIHEGABEN DES KATHOLISCHEN VOLKS IN SÜDDEUTSCHLAND. ElN BEITRAG ZUR VOLKSKUNDE. Von RICHARD ANDRES. Mit 38 Abbildungen im Text, 140 Abbildungen auf 32 Tafeln, und 2 Farbendrucktafeln. Braunschweig: Vieweg und Sohn. 1904. 12 marks paper, 13.50 cloth.

DIE MYTHEN UND LEGENDÉN DER SÜDAMERIKANISCHEN URVÖLKER UND IHRE BEZIEHUNGEN ZU DENEN NORDAMERIKAS UND DER ALTEN WELT. Von DR. PAUL EHRENREICH. Berlin: A. Asher &; Co., 1905. Reviewed by E. Sidney Hartland.

THE FAROES AND ICELAND: STUDIES IN ISLAND LIFE. By NELSON ANNANDALE. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905. Reviewed by Edward Brabrook.

THE SHADE OF THE BALKANS, being a collection of Bulgarian Folk-songs and Proverbs, here for the first time rendered into English, together with an essay on Bulgarian Popular Poetry, and another on the Origin of the Bulgar. Nutt 1904. 7s. 6d. net.

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WEST AFRICA BEFORE EUROPE, AND OTHER ADDRESSES. By E. W. BLTDKN, LL.D. London: C. M. Phillips, 1905. 8vo. Pp. iv, 158. Reviewed by N. W. Thomas.