Anglo-Irish: The Literary Imagination in a Hyphenated Culture

by Julian Moynahan

Overview

In their day, the Anglo-Irish were the ascendant minority—Protestant, loyalist, privileged landholders in a recumbent, rural, and Catholic land. Their world is vanished, but shades of the Anglo-Irish linger in the big-house estates of Ireland and in the imaginative writings of this realm. In this first comprehensive study of their literature, Julian Moynahan rediscovers the unity of their greatest writings, from Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent through Yeats's poetry to Bowen's The Last September and Samuel Beckett's Watt. Throughout he challenges postcolonial assumptions, arguing that the Anglo-Irish since 1800 were indelibly Irish, not mere colonial servants of Imperial Britain. Moynahan begins in 1800 with the Act of Union, when the Anglo-Irish become Irish. Just as the fortunes of this community begin to wane, its literary power unfolds. The Anglo-Irish produce a haunting, memorable body of writings that explore a unique yet always Irish identity and destiny. Moynahan's exploration of the literature reveals women writers—Maria Edgeworth, Edith Somerville, Martin Ross, and Elizabeth Bowen—as a generative and major force in the development of this literary imagination. Along the way, he attends closely to the Gothic and to the mystery writing of C. R. Maturin and J. S. Le Fanu, and provides in-depth revaluations of William Carleton and Charles Lever.

Originally published in 1995.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691629742
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	03/21/2017
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #5203
Pages:	302
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.00(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

I Prologue: "Irish Enough" 3

II Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849): Origination and a Checklist 12

III William Carleton (1794-1869): The Native Informer 43

IV Declensions of Anglo-Irish History: The Act of Union to the Encumbered Estates Acts of 1848-49 ... With a Glance at a Singular Heroine 74

V Charles Lever (1806-72): The Anglo-Irish Writer as Diplomatic Absentee. With a Glance at John Banim 84

VI The Politics of Anglo-Irish Gothic: Charles Robert Maturin, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, and the Return of the Repressed 109

VII History Again: The Era of Parnell - Myths and Realities 136

VIII Spinsters Ball: George Moore and the Land Agitation 144

IX "The Strain of the Double Loyalty": Edith Somerville and Martin Ross 162

X W. B. Yeats and the End of Anglo-Irish Literature 198

XI After the End: The Anglo-Irish Postmortem 224

Afterword 253

Notes 257

Works Cited 269

Index 279

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Viewing this group of writers as a whole offers fresh insights into well-known major writers as well as giving new insights into others. This book will appeal to all readers interested in the English novel, in Irish writers, great and small, and to students of nineteenth-century literature."—Joseph Frank, Stanford University

Editorial Reviews

"This is an excellent study. Here is a scholar who dearly loves literature for its own sake. He writes about the authors under scrutiny in a profoundly illuminating and endearing matter."

The Irish Times

". . . a densely written, scholarly account of the subject, bristling with argument and painstakingly researched. . . . Some may not agree with a few of the premisses from which conclusions are reached. . . . But learned professors are at their best when they're flying a kite or two: in this perceptive book many are flown with refreshing panache."

The Spectator

". . . a densely written, scholarly account of the subject, bristling with argument and painstakingly researched. . . . Some may not agree with a few of the premisses from which conclusions are reached. . . . But learned professors are at their best when they're flying a kite or two: in this perceptive book many are flown with refreshing panache."-- "The Spectator"

"This is an excellent study. Here is a scholar who dearly loves literature for its own sake. He writes about the authors under scrutiny in a profoundly illuminating and endearing matter."-- "The Irish Times"

From the Publisher