Over seventy paintings have been drawn together from museums, galleries and private collections, both in Ireland and abroad, for this book. There are images of fairs and festivals, pubs and pilgrimages, marriages and wakes.

There is a particular emphasis on the lives of ordinary people, struggling to make do - and often enjoying life - on very limited means. There are scenes, too, of relative prosperity, for Ireland had periods of economic growth in the nineteenth century. But for the most part, the paintings tell a story of survival in the face of tremendous adversity, of poor housing, insecure tenancy, famine and emigration.

Seventy key works are reproduced, each accompanied by an individual text on the work and its artist. "Sometimes packed with people, colour and event, sometimes spare, sometimes so honest in their depiction of the hard-working poor as to be painful, the pictures also have a strong narrative sweep, dense with conviction and detail." - Mary Leland, Irish Times "This is a magnificent and excellent study." - Books Ireland