Dublin's Lost Heroines by Kevin Corrigan Kearns
Kevin C. Kearns, the acclaimed author of Dublin Tenement Life and other oral histories, has now prepared a masterly work of reminiscence, celebration and dignity. Based on interviews he has conducted during annual visits to Dublin extending over thirty years, he has drawn together a unique picture of women's lives in the old Dublin slums. The slums of Dublin were among the worst in Europe, rivalled only by Glasgow. Tall town houses, originally built as elegant homes for the rich in the eighteenth century, fell into the hands of avaricious and pitiless landlords who filled them to bursting point with the desperate and impoverished urban poor. Conditions were often unspeakably vile, with massive over-crowding and utterly inadequate sanitation. Yet out of these dreadful tenements, families were reared, households kept together and human dignity maintained. As with most impoverished societies, this was overwhelmingly the work of women, the mammies and grannies of the Dublin slums whose voices course through this remarkable book. They tell of how they lived, of the difficulties they faced, of the grinding poverty, the unemployment, the fecklessness of their men folk and always of their heroic struggle to maintain the basic decencies of human life in inhuman conditions.
Kevin C. Kearns is a former Professor of Social Geography at the University of North Colorado, and an oral historian. He has been an annual visitor to Dublin for over thirty years and is the author of a distinguished series of oral histories of the city, including Dublin Tenement Life (1996), Dublin Street Life and Lore (1997) and Dublin Voices (2001).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780717134632 |
| ISBN 10 | 0717134636 |
| Title | Dublin's Lost Heroines |
| Author | Kevin Corrigan Kearns |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Gill |
| Year published | 2004-10-01 |
| Number of pages | 256 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |