A Cultural History of the Irish Novel, 1790–1829

Abstract

Claire Connolly offers a cultural history of the Irish novel in the period between the radical decade of the 1790s and the gaining of Catholic Emancipation in 1829. These decades saw the emergence of a group of talented Irish writers who developed and advanced such innovative forms as the national tale and the historical novel: fictions that took Ireland as their topic and setting and which often imagined its history via domestic plots that addressed wider issues of dispossession and inheritance. Their openness to contemporary politics, as well as to recent historiography, antiquarian scholarship, poetry, song, plays and memoirs, produced a series of notable fictions; marked most of all by their ability to fashion from these resources a new vocabulary of cultural identity. This book extends and enriches the current understanding of Irish Romanticism, blending sympathetic textual analysis of the fiction with careful historical contextualization.

Edgeworth, Owenson, and the Masculine Border

“…Clare Connolly details the dependence of the Irish novel on London printers and London markets in this period. 9…”

“…14 Claire Connolly argues that the designation 'national tale' cannot quite encompass the set of related works published in the period. 15 Certainly, Ormond is consciously placed outside it, though it shares many of the chief intentions and effects of the national tale. Following Ferris, we might add that the designations domestic and national confine readings of novels to the realm of the representational, ignoring the social, material and political agency involved in their publication and distribution.…”

“…From contemporary reviews forward, critics persistently focus on whether and how novels can representationally contain an already existing place called Ireland. 16 Indeed the term 'Irish novel', when used by early nineteenth-century critics, refers to subject, rather than author or location of production.…”

Canals, Commerce and the Construction of Nation in Sydney Owenson’s O’Donnel

“…Connolly makes an important distinction between 'land as map' and 'land seen as landscape' in her discussion of the Irish novel: while maps are deeply enmeshed within networks of power, 'landscape' implies a more romanticised geography. 34 Owenson explicitly locates the English travellers in O'Donnel within the politicised context of mapping: their approach to Irish topography is abstract and disengaged and the route of their 'circuitous tour' is entirely arbitrary and completely detached from authentic Irish culture. The party of travellers are blighted by the perceived inadequacies of the Irish landscape from the very start of their tour.…”

Selene: Lady Mount Cashell's Lunar Utopia

“…24 Claire Connolly has suggested that Lady Mount Cashell "imagine[s] interplanetary travel as a way of highlighting injustices in Ireland". 25 Although that suggestion is an oversimplification of the novel's broad-ranging sociopolitical critique, Lady Mount Cashell's privileged Irish background undoubtedly informs her depiction of life on both earth and the moon. In 1820, she wrote to Percy Shelley, saying:…”