Book Review - Irish Studies Review

My review of the book Nation/Nazione: Irish Nationalism & The Italian Risorgimento (Dublin: UCD Press, 2013) has just been published on the website of the journal Irish Studies Review. Here is the DOI: 10.1080/09670882.2014.955952

It was refreshing to look at a book based on Italo-Irish relations, rather than Franco-Irish studies, which I normally work on. It seems to me that Ireland's relationship with France is quite different from that with Italy.

We've seen that at crucial moments throughout Irish history, Irish people have looked to France for help. An example of this would be the 1798 Rebellion, when Wolfe Tone and The Society of United Irishmen sought and received French military assistance to stage an uprising against British rule in Ireland. I don't think we could say that the same kind of relationship exists / existed between Italy and Ireland.

Nevertheless, there have been a good number of significant cultural, religious and military connections between Ireland and Italy down through the years. For example, James Caulfeild, 1st Earl of Charlemont, who built the architectural gem that is the Casino at Marino in Dublin, traveled extensively in Italy. He spoke the language like a local, admired the country immensely and was greatly inspired by its architecture and customs.

The following book, Italian presence in Ireland: a contribution to Irish-Italian relations (Dublin: Istituto Italiano di Cultura, 1964), would provide readers with an introduction to the area. It was published to mark the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Italian Institute of Culture in Dublin. 

According to an article in the Irish Independent from 8 January 1955, five hundred people applied for membership of the Institute in the first few weeks after it opened. They were only expecting one hundred and fifty. It seems that Irish interest in Italy is nothing new!

Dorothea Lange in Ireland - 60 years ago

The American photographer, Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), is perhaps best known for her poignant photographs of migrant families and farm workers in 1930s America. She captured the faces of migrants who had traveled to California from the Midwest of America in search of work and a better life.

This photograph of Florence Owens Thompson surrounded by some of her children was taken at a camp for migrant farm workers in Nipomo, California in 1936.

Image source: http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8b29516/

Lange's first trip outside of the USA was to Ireland. In 1954 Dorothea Lange traveled to Ireland on assignment with Life Magazine with her journalist son Daniel Dixon (1925-2009).

While they spent some time in Dublin initially, they were in County Clare for the majority of the one month that they spent in Ireland. Over the course of their stay, Lange took some 2,400 photographs, which are now held in the Dorothea Lange Collection at the Oakland Museum of California. These photos can be viewed online at the University of California's calisphere website.

A nine page article entitled Irish Country People was published in Life Magazine on 21 March 1955. It contains twenty one of Lange's photographs together with a brief sketch by her son detailing the scenes they witnessed.

A book, Dorothea Lange's Ireland was published in 1996. It contains 106 photographs that she took in Ireland as well as articles by academic, Gerry Mullins and her son, Daniel Dixon. Lange's trip to Ireland was also the subject of a film. In Dierdre Lynch's Photos to Send, Lynch travels to Ireland and interviews the surviving subjects of Lange's photographs.

Read more about Lange's time in Ireland on the Clare County Library Blog.