Oceans of Consolation : : Personal Accounts of Irish Migration to Australia / / ed. by David Fitzpatrick.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Archive Pre-2000
• HerausgeberIn: Fitzpatrick, David,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2019]; ©1995
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (624 p.) :; 65 halftones, 12 drawings, 5 maps, 9 tables.

"An ocean of consolation" was what one young Irish emigrant in rural Australia called a letter from his father in County Clare in 1855. Similar strength of feeling is often found in the intriguing letters that David Fitzpatrick has unearthed for this extraordinary collection. Oceans of Consolation offers historians and family researchers novel and sophisticated ways of reading old letters. It opens to us the daily preoccupations of ordinary women and men with little education and fewer material possessions, as they try to overcome the separation from family and friends created by emigration. Fitzpatrick includes the personal correspondence of fourteen families of Irish emigrants in the Australian colonies, giving equal attention to letters to and from Australia. He reproduces in full more than one hundred letters dating from 1843 to 1906, and includes a generous selection of contemporary engravings and photographs.Fitzpatrick's detailed commentaries offer biographical narratives for all of these emigrants, tracing their Irish backgrounds and Australian careers. Parting company with editors of comparable collections, he pays special attention to the words and idiom by which letterwriters expressed their everyday concerns and sought or offered reassurance and advice. He believes that personal letters provide not only unique evidence of the hopes and fears of emigrants but also an important avenue for exploring popular Irish culture.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Abbreviations -- INTRODUCTION -- 1. Representations: Letters and Migration -- NEWS FROM AUSTRALIA -- 2. ‘Whistling a Jig to a Milestone’: Michael Normile, 1854-65 -- 3. ‘These Golden Shores’: Isabella Wyly, 1856-77 -- 4. ‘Queensland for Ever, augus un Ballybug go Braugh’: Biddy Burke, 1882-84 -- VICTORIAN VOICES -- 5. ‘A Happy Home for You and Myself’: Michael Hogan, 1853-57 -- 6. ‘Jack Is as Good as His Master’: Edward O’Sullivan, 1857-72 -- 7. ‘We Are Not Living in a Wilderness’: The McCance Circle, 1856-63 -- 8. ‘An Outside Part of the World’: Patrick and Edward Comber, 1862-92 -- 9. ‘A Friendly Chat’: Philip Mahony, 1882-90 -- NEWS FROM HOME -- 10. ‘Facing the Wild Ocean’: William and Eliza Dalton, 1851-59 -- 11. ‘Always Be Submessive to Your Superiors’: The Dunne Circle, 1864-77 -- 12. ‘It Takes Me Tow Days to Rite a Letter’: The Doorley Circle, 1877-1906 -- ULSTER ACCENTS -- 13. ‘Comming Down the Hill of Life’: The Hammond Circle, 1843-64 -- 14. ‘We Will Meet in Ireland Yet’: The Brennan Circle, 1865-76 -- 15. ‘Farewell Farewell My Children’: William Fife, 1860-81 -- THEMES -- 16. Correspondence: Ceremonies of Communication -- 17. Reciprocity: The Politics of Kinship -- 18. Negotiation: The Process of Migration -- 19. Origins: Images of Ireland -- 20. Outcomes: Images of Australia -- 21. Reflections: Culture, Identity, Home -- Sources -- Thematic Index