Consuming Irish Children

As far as Irish history is concerned, consuming Irish children was not only a matter for Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal . Late nineteenth-century Ireland saw the emergence of a thriving home-grown advertising industry, and the Irish child played a pivotal role in developing a nascent consumer state from the 1860s until 1921. Through extensive analysis of advertising copy, historical materials, ephemera and literature, this study links the child-centred consumer culture of Victorian Ireland w