PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Baron Jozsef Eotvos - whose statue stands in Budapest in the square that bears his name - was one of the most interesting and appealing Hungarian public figures of the 19th century: a statesman driven by deep humanitarianism, a much-admired political thinker, and the first master of the Hungarian realist novel. He was born to a noble family in Buda in 1813, at a time when Latin was the official State language and German the language encouraged by the Habsburg monarchy. He did not learn Hungarian until he was 13. By the time Jozsef visited Ireland, he already had a reputation as a poet; and over the next ten years, he would publish a number of novels, including Hungary's first realist novel - The Village Notary /A falu jegyzoje (1845) - which was immediately hailed as a classic and translated into many languages. He campaigned for the freedom of the serfs and the emancipation of the Jews. As a government minister, he introduced ground-breaking proposals for universal education. He died in 1871.
"""ONE OF THE FIVE BEST IRISH-PUBLISHED BOOKS OF 2017 – The first thing the book does is demolish the fiction that Irish people were well-fed before the Famine. Ten years before it started they were already half starving in the streets… Young, aristocratic, educated, and unusually idealistic, Eotvos understood that some nations prospered through the brutal exploitation of others and he was unafraid to say how or why… Wherever he went he saw abundance in the midst of great poverty. The exploitation and cruelty were so extreme that it produced great sadness in the people and anger in Eotvos… Those who hold the power of life and death over others will use that power only for tyranny, Eotvos warned."" – IRISH CENTRAL, NEW YORK; – ""A remarkable study of the causes and effects of poverty in pre-Famine Ireland... an acutely accurate account of conditions in the country in the mid-1830s... The baron's sources are impeccable; he quotes widely and wisely, to add to his own observations... After 175 years the book rings true for the devastating accuracy of its reporting of the ills of Ireland and the reason why the poor suffered so much. Eotvos does not explicitly forecast the Great Famine but makes it clear that all the conditions for it had already been set in place by the 1830s. ...It's a vivid and gripping tale that totally contradicts the official story of Ireland peddled by its then administrators..."" – BOOKS IRELAND MAGAZINE; – ""On the Tragedy of the Irish, Through Hungarian eyes – There are few examples showing this troubled period of Ireland through the eyes of a foreigner (not Irish or British) with such scientific thoroughness and literary sensitivity. ...The book should be among the recommended readings for the responsible citizens of the European Union...this is an exemplary edition, being the first annotated version of Eotvos's work..."" – CENTRAL EUROPEAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW; – ""Amongst many visitors to pre-Famine Ireland was the Hungarian baron Jozsef Eotvos (a campaigner for the freedom of serfs who went on to become a major literary and political figure in his homeland); he was horrified by what he witnessed here and castigated Ireland's...rulers for exercising, as he put it, their 'unlimited and self-serving power over the people'..."" – HISTORY IRELAND MAGAZINE; – ""Highly interesting and an excellent publication both in content and format... an important contribution to an understanding of Eötvös in the international academic community."" – Dr PAUL BODY [author of 'Joseph Eotvos and the Modernization of Hungary 1840-1870', American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia]; – ""Very interesting and welcome text which presents the Hungarian original and the English translation on facing pages… Poverty in Ireland 1837 is a wonderful text that offers a reflective early-mid nineteenth-century observation on Ireland of less than a decade before the social and demographic cataclysm of the Great Famine. A fascinating insight…"" – HUNGARIAN CULTURAL STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH; – Also highly praised in Hungarian-language reviews in Austria and in Australia – in BECSI NAPLO (`VIENNESE DIARY’) Journal, Vienna; – and in MAGYAR ELET (`HUNGARIAN LIFE’) weekly, Melbourne & Sydney."
