Letters from Ireland: Harriet Martineau

Written as a series of letters or reports for the Daily News in the autumn of 1852, the text works effectively as a single volume, bringing together diverse issues in a composed and coherent manner. In essence a travelogue, Letters from Ireland conveys a sense of all that is best about travel literature: opinionated, on the move and impressionistic, Martineau offers her readers access to a picture of Ireland that is at times frustrating and provocative, but always readable and well-argued. Although the text was written as a series of discrete pieces of a journalistic nature, the reader IS drawn towards a certain vision of a country which fascinated, and equally aggravated, the author.