The Great Hunger

Irish-only original — there is no UK or US first edition. Precedence trap: the poem's first appearance in print was in the London journal Horizon, January 1942, which carried parts I–III and an excerpt of part IV under the title 'The Old Peasant' (placed there on John Betjeman's recommendation). The Cuala Press issued the complete fourteen-part poem in April 1942; that is the first book edition and the first appearance of the full text. A periodical run of a partial text under a different title does not displace the Cuala book as the collected first.