[Carbery, Mary] Sandford, Jeremy.

Mary Carbery’s West Cork Journal. 1898-1901 or “From the Back of Beyond”. Edited by Jeremy Sandford.

Dublin, The Lilliput Press, 1998. 16.1 cm x 24 cm. 158 pages. With 10 black and white illustrations. Original Hardcover with dustjacket in protective collector’s Mylar. Very good+ condition with only minor signs of external wear.

Includes for example the following chapters: The People of Castle Freke / Spring / Summer / Autumn / Winter / Epilogue: The Carberry Family after 1901 etc.

This is the remarkable journal of an Englishwoman in her early thirties abroad in Ireland, recently widowed and sole mistress of the vast neo-medieval Castle Freke overlooking a remote headland in West Cork, where she raised her young family in the company of servants, dependants and occasional visitors. Reflective and sensitive, Mary Carbery was deeply attuned to the spirit of the place and to the people she lived amongst in Ross Carbery, studying Irish and taking note of local speech, folklife and customs. This journal of 1898 to 1901, previously unpublished, is an intimate record of one woman’s growing attachment to an alien countryside and its inhabitants, bringing them vividly to life with the eye of a naturalist and the ear of a writer. (From jacket notes)

Mary Carbery (1867-1949) was an English author. Born Mary Vanessa Toulmin, she was born and raised at Childwickbury Manor, Hertfordshire.

She married London born and Cambridge educated Algernon William George Evans-Freke, 9th Baron Carbery of Castle Freke, County Cork, Ireland. Following his premature death in 1898, Carbery was left to the run the estate on her own where she raised her family. She later married Professor Arthur Wellesley Sandford of Frankfield House, County Cork, Ireland.

Amongst her books are The Children of the Dawn, The Farm by Loch Gur, The Light in the Window, Hertfordshire Heritage, The Germans in Cork (a warning to the pro-German faction in Ireland of what a German invasion would really be like), Happy World, and West Cork Journal (edited by her grandson, Jeremy Sandford). Her eldest son by her first marriage, John, 10th Baron Carbery, was an Irish nationalist and member of the Kenyan Happy Valley set. Her eldest son by her second marriage, Christopher Sandford, was proprietor of the Golden Cockerel Press.

She spent much of the early part of the last century crossing Europe in Creeping Jenny, a caravan drawn by white oxen, and is credited with being the first person to install a bath in a mobile home. She is the subject of the second half of the book “Happy Memories” (Faith Press, 1960), by her sister, Constance Toulmin.

She died at Eye Manor, Herefordshire in 1949. (Wikipedia)

• Keywords: Biographies and Memoirs · Biography · Castle Freke · Castlefreke – Rathbarry Collection · Diary · Ireland · Ireland, 1890-1930 · Journal · Library & Collection Building · Non-Fiction · West Cork
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1874675368
• Inventory Number: 200414AB