ABSTRACT
Lydia Jane Leadbeater Fisher was part of a small number of privileged women who traversed Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century and left a written account. The elite group included Maria Edgeworth in the 1830s, Asenath Nicholson in 1844 and again from 1847 to 1849, Harriet Martineau in 1852, and Queen Victoria in 1849, 1853, and 1861 and in 1900, shortly before her death. Fisher toured County Kerry in 1845, on the cusp of the onset of the Great Famine. Unlike many other women commentators, she was Irish, and then living in Limerick. Lydia, as part of a larger party, toured around County Kerry in the summer of 1845. Although her account is largely concerned with the picturesque, amidst the beauty she also noted the dirt and poverty. It is unlikely that Fisher or her companions were aware that a new form of potato disease was appearing in the Dublin area.
