Connemara After the Famine Journal of a Survey of the Martin Estate by Thomas Colville Scott, 1853

Only recently discovered, this is a unique and valuable record, kept by Scott, a Scottish lawyer sent by his London life insurance employer to report on an estate about to go on sale -- 200,000 acres of Irish land north of Galway, Connemara. Not a great deal unlike Harkness being sent to assess Count Dracula's estate, Scott comes upon a terror-stricken landscape, an "inhabited desolation". Robinson's fine Introduction and notes to the piece help us to understand and appreciate this rare first-hand account about the ffamine survivors in one of the most devastated parts of the country.