"An ocean of consolation" was what one young Irish emigrant in rural Australia called a letter from his father in County Clare in 1855. Similar strength of feeling is often found in the intriguing letters that David Fitzpatrick has unearthed for this extraordinary collection. Oceans of Consolation offers historians and family researchers novel and sophisticated ways of reading old letters. It opens to us the daily preoccupations of ordinary women and men with little education and fewer material possessions, as they try to overcome the separation from family and friends created by emigration. Fitzpatrick includes the personal correspondence of fourteen families of Irish emigrants in the Australian colonies, giving equal attention to letters to and from Australia. He reproduces in full more than one hundred letters dating from 1843 to 1906, and includes a generous selection of contemporary engravings and photographs. Fitzpatrick's detailed commentaries offer biographical narratives for all of these emigrants, tracing their Irish backgrounds and Australian careers. Parting company with editors of comparable collections, he pays special attention to the words and idiom by which letterwriters expressed their everyday concerns and sought or offered reassurance and advice. He believes that personal letters provide not only unique evidence of the hopes and fears of emigrants but also an important avenue for exploring popular Irish culture.

For most of us, mourning is something to be endured. We are often merely passive spectators of our own pain, and we see our grief period as a grim mountain that we must climb over. But Maurice Lamm tells us it can be much more. Bereavement, he says, can often be an enriching experience, even as it is a sorrowful and often tragic one. Our faith in a higher power can move us to not only live through the present but also to stride into the future with renewed energy and a revitalized outlook on life. In this, his sequel to the best-selling The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning (over 350,000 copies sold), Rabbi Lamm helps mourners not just get through their grief, but also grow through it. He gently steers mourners on the path that allows their sorrow to teach them important lessons about life. And he shows consolers how to listen and speak with their hearts so that they can provide real comfort to others. His marvelous insights on the days of shiva, the year of kaddish, and the lovingkindness of others reveal the richness and true purpose of Jewish mourning rituals and customs. They prepare us to receive consolation and ready us for the journey that will take us beyond grief. His "Words for a Loss When at a Loss for Words" is a treasury of readings for finding and giving comfort by transforming the spiritual ideas of an ancient faith into contemporary language. Here there are stories and fables that illuminate our complicated lives, meditations from the depths of human experience, and a gallery of unforgettable images that speak to our souls during times of loss. Rabbi Lamm's words will help all who walk the path of grief to find their way to consolation--and then beyond, to an appreciation of the blessings and opportunities that present themselves to us when we confront loss. And they can even take us further, to discover the celebrated Jewish art--of wringing blessing out of tragedy.

Explores the experiences of Italian immigrants in Australia between 1860 and 1962.

This book brings together a series of articles which provide an overview of the Irish Diaspora from a global perspective. It combines a series of survey articles on the major destinations of the Diaspora; the USA, Britian and the British Empire. On each of these, there is a number of more specialist articles by historians, demographers, economists, sociologists and geographers. The inter-disciplinary approach of the book, with a strong historical and modern focus, provides the first comprehensive survey of the topic.

This volume brings together current research by international scholars on the varieties of English spoken in Ireland. The papers apply contemporary theoretical and methodological approaches and frameworks to a range of topics. A number of papers explore the distribution of linguistic features in Irish English, including the evolution of linguistic structures in Irish English and linguistic change in progress, employing broadly quantitative sociolinguistic approaches. Pragmatic features of Irish English are explored through corpus linguistics-based analysis. The construction of linguistic corpora using written and recorded material form the focus of other papers, extending and analyzing the growing range of corpus material available to researchers of varieties of English, including diaspora varieties. Issues of language and identity in contemporary Ireland are explored in several contributions using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The volume will be of interest to linguists generally, and to scholars with an interest in varieties of English.

In some ways, Canadian history has always been international, comparative, and wide-ranging. However, in recent years the importance of the ties between Canadian and transnational history have become increasingly clear. Within and Without the Nation brings scholars from a range of disciplines together to examine Canada’s past in new ways through the lens of transnational scholarship. Moving beyond well-known comparisons with Britain and the United States, the fifteen essays in this collection connect Canada with Latin America, the Caribbean, and the wider Pacific world, as well as with other parts of the British Empire. Examining themes such as the dispossession of indigenous peoples, the influence of nationalism and national identity, and the impact of global migration, Within and Without the Nation is a text which will help readers rethink what constitutes Canadian history.

Neglected sources for the history of Australian immigration (Visible immigrants 1)

This volume brings together some of the most distinguished historians from Ireland to offer their own interpretations of key issues and events in Irish history.