John Gibbons, Tramping through Ireland, 1930

What is inside?

Originally published in London in 1930 by Methuen & Co., Ltd and republished here in fully-searchable digital format is John Gibbons' Tramping Through Ireland. Having previously published My Own Queer Country and Tramping to Lourdes, this was Gibbons third travelogue to reach the public. In his Tramping Through Lourdes Gibbons became somewhat of a celebrity by walking the seven hundred miles from Calais to Lourdes armed only with a walking stick and knapsack and no knowledge of French. Gibbons' witty observations and exploits were serialised for the British Press before finding their way into book form and were so popular that he embarked on another 'tramp' this time through Ireland. Gibbons, was both a Catholic and an Englishman, which both the press and his publishers liked his readership to know. Gibbons exploits in Ireland were initially serialised in the Daily Express and later by Methuen in book form. Avoiding the tourist routes and always off the beaten track, Gibbons walked the length and breadth of post-partition Ireland, from Dublin to Galway and from Donegal to Waterford. His London publishers believed the results of Gibbons' observations, the first made by a traveller on Independent Ireland were 'interesting' and 'bound to be provocative', while the Irish press thought that his expressions were honest with a good deal to say that was interesting.

Containing some 168 printed pages, Tramping Through Ireland begins in Liverpool aboard the Lady Munster with a nervous traveller - Gibbons - embarking on his first trip to Ireland wondering what he will have to write for the waiting millions of readers of the Daily Express. He and his readers need not have fretted and his initially keen observations were that Dublin and especially Blackrock, Dalkey and Dun Laoghaire were just like England, 'just less commercialised'. Board, Gibbons embarks on a tour of Dublin's slums before being taken to a shebeen and on retiring Gibbons remarks that 'Dublin had had at last yielded something' From Dublin, Gibbons is persuaded that he should visit the most Irish thing in Ireland, Lough Derg in County Donegal. Gibbons remarks that properly one should tramp there barefoot, but it was suggested that although one could make the pilgrimage barefoot, some still did, this was the exception nowadays rather than the rule, as most people in a modern country took the train. Witty, observant and most of all honest, John Gibbons' Tramping Through Ireland, will delight readers now as did over seventy years ago.

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