The Romantic National Tale and the Question of Ireland

Ina Ferris examines the way in which the problem of "incomplete union" (generated by the formation of the United Kingdom in 1800) destabilized British public discourse in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Ferris presents a full-length study of the chief genre to emerge out of the political problem of Union: the national tale, an intercultural and mostly female-authored fictional mode that articulated Irish grievances to English readers.