Dispossession has a long and tortuous history in Ireland, reaching back to the eleventh century. In the Victorian era, evictions became major social, cultural and political events, especially with the notorious clearances of the Great Famine years. Drawing on memoirs, ballads, poems, folklore and novels, this book studies rural evictions.

Dispossession has a long and tortuous history in Ireland, from the Victorian era when evictions were a major social, cultural, and political event; to their dramatic decline after the mid-1850s; and their zenith of media attention and political import in the 1880s, when the Irish National Land League was founded. Drawing on memoirs, ballads, poems, folklore, and novels as well as providing numerous illustrations of contemporary prints and photographs, Curtis provides the first book-length study of rural evictions over a period of sixty years. L. Perry Curtis, Jr, whose books include Coercion and Conciliation in Ireland (1963), retired in 2001 from the Departments of History, Modern Culture, and Media at Brown University. He now lives in Vermont.