Peter Costello
Caribbean Slave Owners & Other Lesser-Known Histories from County Mayo, by Dr M. M. O’Connor
(Published by the author at The Morrigan, Murrisk, Westport, Co. Mayo, €25.00)
This is a book which only recently came to my notice, for it was not sent to us for review. Certainly the title captures your attention at once, for the whole question of slavery, slave owning and profiting from slavery, is under closer examination than ever before. The long essay on Mayo’s slavery connections runs to 57 pages – and would have made a book in itself, which would have interested many readers.
But in this mighty tome, which runs to over 500 closely printed pages, it is united with nineteen other essays, some also of a good length.
Content
The essays are all excellent, some indeed ground breaking, and all worth reading. The real problem is with their cumbersome presentation.
This reviewer feels that it would have been far more effective to have broken up the material into at least three much shorter books, which could have been given a more unified scope. A model, taken down from my own shelves, might have been Kenneth Connell’s Irish Peasant Society, for instance, which contained only four interrelated essays, which in its treatment made a huge impact on the way Irish history might be written. Or again The White Hind and other Discoveries by the Scottish historian Sir James Fergusson of Kilkerran, which contains a dozen essays of more closely written scope.
Books are expensive to publish and the price of this book alone suggests the author’s generosity of spirit to his readers in subsidising it himself. But many readers will find a book as large as bible to be uncomfortable to hold and to read. In many ways it is ‘over produced’.
Dr Connell’s excellent essays truly deserve that kind of presentation”
Dr O’Connell’s earlier book Anatomy of a County Gaol, was more closely focused. He promises yet another book entitled Criminal Conversations with My Wife chronicling more tales from Co. Mayo. Again the title catches the eye and one suspect it too deals with that often clouded area of inter-religious marriage.
Yet one hope it might be presented in a smaller, more accessible volume of a more attractive design. The careful design and typography of Fr Gaughan’s book by consultant Susan Waine shows that stylish and easy to engage with books of classical elegance can still be created in Ireland. Dr Connell’s excellent essays truly deserve that kind of presentation. In literature as in life less is often more.
The careful design and typography of Fr Gaughan’s book by consultant Susan Waine shows that stylish and easy to engage with books of classical elegance can still be created in Ireland”