Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 The literature of medieval Ireland to c. 800: St Patrick to the Vikings
- 2 The literature of medieval Ireland, 800–1200: from the Vikings to the Normans
- 3 The literature of later medieval Ireland, 1200–1600: from the Normans to the Tudors
- 4 Literature in English, 1550–1690: from the Elizabethan settlement to the Battle of the Boyne
- 5 Literature in Irish, c.1550–1690: from the Elizabethan settlement to the Battle of the Boyne
- 6 Prose in English, 1690–1800: from the Williamite wars to the Act of Union
- 7 Poetry in English, 1690–1800: from the Williamite wars to the Act of Union
- 8 Literature in Irish, 1690–1800: from the Williamite wars to the Act of Union
- 9 Theatre in Ireland, 1690–1800: from the Williamite wars to the Act of Union
- 10 Irish Romanticism, 1800–1830
- 11 Prose writing and drama in English, 1830–1890: from Catholic emancipation to the fall of Parnell
- 12 Poetry in English, 1830–1890: from Catholic emancipation to the fall of Parnell
- 13 Literature in Irish, 1800–1890: from the Act of Union to the Gaelic League
- 14 Historical writings, 1690–1890
- 15 Literature and the oral tradition
- Guide to major subject areas
- Index
- References
11 - Prose writing and drama in English, 1830–1890: from Catholic emancipation to the fall of Parnell
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 The literature of medieval Ireland to c. 800: St Patrick to the Vikings
- 2 The literature of medieval Ireland, 800–1200: from the Vikings to the Normans
- 3 The literature of later medieval Ireland, 1200–1600: from the Normans to the Tudors
- 4 Literature in English, 1550–1690: from the Elizabethan settlement to the Battle of the Boyne
- 5 Literature in Irish, c.1550–1690: from the Elizabethan settlement to the Battle of the Boyne
- 6 Prose in English, 1690–1800: from the Williamite wars to the Act of Union
- 7 Poetry in English, 1690–1800: from the Williamite wars to the Act of Union
- 8 Literature in Irish, 1690–1800: from the Williamite wars to the Act of Union
- 9 Theatre in Ireland, 1690–1800: from the Williamite wars to the Act of Union
- 10 Irish Romanticism, 1800–1830
- 11 Prose writing and drama in English, 1830–1890: from Catholic emancipation to the fall of Parnell
- 12 Poetry in English, 1830–1890: from Catholic emancipation to the fall of Parnell
- 13 Literature in Irish, 1800–1890: from the Act of Union to the Gaelic League
- 14 Historical writings, 1690–1890
- 15 Literature and the oral tradition
- Guide to major subject areas
- Index
- References
Summary
The 1830s have been termed by some commentators as the decade in which Irish fiction faced collapse, and, in support of this view, critics commonly cite a letter written by Maria Edgeworth in 1834, the year in which Helen, her last novel, was published. Writing from her home in Edgeworthstown to her brother Michael Pakenham Edgeworth in India, the novelist observed: ‘It is impossible to draw Ireland as she now is in a book of fiction – realities are too strong, party passions too violent to bear to see, or care to look at their faces in the looking-glass. The people would only break the glass, and curse the fool who held the mirror up to nature – distorted nature, in a fever.’ As chapters 8 and 10 by Ross and Connolly have shown, by 1830 Ireland was well established as a locale for fiction and Irish fiction was firmly embedded within emerging definitions of realism – trends exemplified by the success of Edgeworth’s writings. While the remarks quoted above spell the end of her own novel-writing career, they greatly underestimate the tenacity of Irish fiction. Five years earlier, in an address ‘to the reader’ which prefaced her Book of the Boudoir (1829), Sydney Owenson had delivered a more accurate prediction of the future for Irish writing: ‘Among the multitudinous effects of catholic emancipation, I do not hesitate to predict a change in the character of Irish authorship.’
However, with the exception of the much-cited William Carleton and the undervalued George Moore, the period of 1830 to 1890 is still not readily identifiable through major prose writers or dramatists, and many of the most popular authors of the time – Charles Lever, Anna Maria Hall and Hubert O’Grady, for example – fared badly in subsequent criticism.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Irish Literature , pp. 449 - 499Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
References
1902; cited in Anglo-Irish: The Literary Imagination in a Hyphenated Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
The Gothic Family Romance: Heterosexuality, Child Sacrifice, and the Anglo-Irish Colonial Order (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).Google Scholar
‘Introduction’ to , ed. Charles Lever: New Evaluations (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1991).Google Scholar
, ed. The Irish Novel in the Nineteenth Century: Facts and Fictions, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005.Google Scholar
‘Printers and Booksellers in Dublin 1800–1850’, in and , eds. Spreading the Word: The Distribution Networks of Print, 1550–1850 (Winchester: St Paul’s Bibliographies, 1990).Google Scholar
preface to Uncle Silas (London: Cresset Press, 1947), reproduced in The Mulberry Tree: Writings of Elizabeth Bowen, selected and introduced by (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986).Google Scholar
The Chronicles of Castle Cloyne, 3 vols. (1884; reprinted New York: Garland Press, 1979), I.Google Scholar
‘British Critical Reception of Nineteenth-Century Anglo-Irish Fiction’, in and , eds. Literary Interrelations: Ireland, England and the World, 3 vols. (Tübingen: G. Narr, 1987), I.Google Scholar
‘General Introduction’, Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, new edn, 2 vols. (Dublin and London: Curry and Orr, 1843–4), I.Google Scholar
, Autobiography, first published 1896, new edition Belfast: White Row Press, 1996, with a foreword by .Google Scholar
‘Chartism’ (1839); reprinted in , English and Other Critical Essays (London: Dent, 1964).Google Scholar
Charles J. Kickham: A Study in Irish Nationalism and Literature (Dublin: Wolfhound, 1979).Google Scholar
Allegories of Union in Irish and English Writing, 1790–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ireland: Social, Political and Religious, trans. , 2 vols. (London: Bentley, 1839), I.Google Scholar
, Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1790, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.Google Scholar
DUM 6 (December 1835); cited by Dialogues in the Margin: A Study of the Dublin University Magazine (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999).Google Scholar
to , 19 February 1834; reproduced in , A Memoir of Maria Edgeworth, 3 vols. (privately printed, 1867), III.Google Scholar
‘On Irish Novels’ (1904), reprinted in , editor in chief, Irish Literature, 10 vols. (Philadelphia: Morris, 1904), V.Google Scholar
The Romantic National Tale and the Question of Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘Literature in English, 1801–91’, in , ed. New History of Ireland, vol. V: Ireland under the Union I, 1801–1870 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).Google Scholar
invaluable biography, George Moore: 1852–1933 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
preface to Thomas Carlyle, Reminiscences of My Irish Journey in 1849 (London: Sampson Low, 1882).Google Scholar
Special Aspects of the Irish Question: A Series of Reflections in and since 1886 (1892; London: The Daily Chronicle, 1912).Google Scholar
‘Novels of Irish Life in the Nineteenth Century’ (1897), reprinted in his Irish Books and Irish People (Dublin: Talbot, 1919).Google Scholar
, Dialogues in the Margin: A Study of the Dublin University Magazine, Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999.Google Scholar
, ‘A Reading and Thinking Nation: Periodicals as the Voice of Nineteenth-Century Ireland’, in and , eds. Three Hundred Years of Irish Periodicals, Mullingar: Lilliput Press, 1987.Google Scholar
, ‘British Critical Reception of Nineteenth-Century Anglo-Irish Fiction’, in and , eds. Literary Interrelations: Ireland, England and the World, 3 vols. Tübingen: G. Narr, 1987, I.Google Scholar
, Carleton’s Traits and Stories and the Nineteenth-Century Anglo-Irish Tradition, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1983.Google Scholar
For the Land They Loved: Irish Political Melodramas, 1890–1925 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1991).Google Scholar
, ed. The Tourist’s Gaze: Travellers to Ireland, 1800–200, Cork: Cork University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
‘Yeats and the Wrong Lever’, in , ed. Yeats, Sligo and Ireland (Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1980).Google Scholar
, ‘The Cabinet of Irish Literature: A Historical Perspective on Irish Anthologies’, Éire-Ireland 38 (2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Women’s Fiction, 1845–1900’, in , , , , , , and , eds. Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, vols. IV and V: lrish Women’s Writing and Traditions, Cork: Cork University Press, 2002, V.Google Scholar
The Feminization of Famine: Expressions of the Inexpressible? (Cork and Durham, NC: Cork University Press and Duke University Press, 1997), chapter 2.Google Scholar
‘“Wanted an Irish Novelist”: The Critical Decline of the Nineteenth-Century Novel’, in , ed. The Irish Novel in the Nineteenth Century: Facts and Fictions (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005).Google Scholar
‘Charlotte Riddell’s A Struggle for Fame: The Field of Women’s Literary Production;’, Colby Quarterly 36, 2 (2000).Google Scholar
‘The Image of Ireland in Nineteenth-Century Drama’, in and , eds. Perspectives of Irish Drama and Theatre, Irish Literary Studies XXXIII (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1991).Google Scholar
Letters, Speeches and Tracts on Irish Affairs by Edmund Burke, collected and arranged by (London: Macmillan, 1881), preface. Republished as Irish Affairs: Edmund Burke, with an introduction by Conor (London: Cresset, 1988).Google Scholar
, Anomalous States: Irish Writing and the Post-Colonial Moment, Dublin: Lilliput, 1993.Google Scholar
, ‘Blood Transfusions: Constructions of Irish Racial Difference, the English Working Class, and Revolutionary Possibility in the Work of Carlyle and Engels;’, Victorian Literature and Culture 32, 1 (2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘Past and Present State of Literature in Ireland’, Dublin University Magazine (DUM) 9 (March 1837)Google Scholar
‘The Intellectual Revival (1830–1850)’, in , general ed. The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 3 vols. (Derry: Field Day, 1991), I.Google Scholar
Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980; 2nd edn, Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1991).Google Scholar
, ‘The Intellectual Revival (1830–1850)’, in , general ed. The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 3 vols. Derry: Field Day, 1991.Google Scholar
, Ascendancy and Tradition in Anglo-Irish History 1789–1939, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985; revised and enlarged edition: From Burke to Beckett: Ascendancy, Tradition and Betrayal in Anglo-Irish Literary History from 1789 to 1939, Cork: Cork University Press, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘Decadence, Degeneration and Revolting Aesthetics: The Fiction of Emily Lawless and Katherine Cecil Thurston;’, Colby Quarterly 36, 2 (2000).Google Scholar
Shaw and the Nineteenth-Century Theatre (Oxford and Princeton: Oxford University Press and Princeton University Press, 1963).Google Scholar
‘England and Ireland’ (1868), republished in , ed. Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, 33 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), VI.Google Scholar
Parnell and His Island, ed. (1887; new edition Dublin: Classics in Irish History series, University College Dublin Press, 2004).Google Scholar
, Catholic Fiction and Social Reality in Ireland, 1873–1922 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997).Google Scholar
ed. Best Hundred Irish Books by ‘Historicus’ (Dublin: privately printed by the Freeman’s Journal, 1886).Google Scholar
, ‘Protestant Magic: W. B. Yeats and the Spell of Irish History’, in , Paddy and Mr Punch: Connections in Irish and English History (London: Penguin, 1993)Google Scholar
and , eds. The Cabinet of Irish Literature, 4 vols. (London and Glasgow: Blackie, 1879–80), IV.Google Scholar
[early] December 1889; reprinted in The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, vol. I: 1865–1895, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).Google Scholar
, ‘Literature in English’, in and , eds. Nineteenth-Century Ireland: A Guide to Recent Research, Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2005.Google Scholar
and , Ireland: Its Scenery and Character, 3 vols. (London: How and Parsons, 1841–3), I.Google Scholar
Victorian Novelists and Publishers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976); cited in , Charles Lever: The Lost Victorian (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 2000).Google Scholar
, Irish Literature: A Social History, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1990; new edition 1999.Google Scholar
Joyce, O’Casey and the Irish Popular Theatre (Syracuse NY: Syracuse, University Press, 1991).Google Scholar
introduction to new edition of May Laffan (Hartley), Flitters, Tatters and the Counsellor and Other Sketches (1881; New York: Garland Press, 1989).Google Scholar
‘First Principles’, Samhain 7 (November 1908); reprinted in Explorations (1962; London: Macmillan, 1989).Google Scholar
‘Irish National Literature, II: Contemporary Prose Writers’, The Bookman (August 1895); reprinted in , Uncollected Prose, I.Google Scholar
‘Popular Ballad Poetry of Ireland’ (1889), reprinted in , ed. Uncollected Prose by W. B. Yeats, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1970), I.Google Scholar
- 1
- Cited by