Main theme: the fortunes and the sufferings of an Irish family of small farmers under the old land system. The peasant’s love of home and the bitter sadness of emigration are brought out in the unfolding of the tale. All through there runs a love-tale told with the Author’s usual restraint, simplicity, and delicate analysis of motive. There is a humorous element, too, amusing bailiffs and policemen furnishing much of it. Constable Sproule driving home the pigs is capitally done. Rody Flynn is a grand old character, evidently sketched from life.
⸺ THE PIG-DRIVING PEELERS.
Appears in one of the “Knickerbocker Nuggets,” entitled “Representative Irish Tales.” Compiled, with Introd. and notes by W. B. Yeats. (N.Y.: Putnam). Two Vols. n.d.
KING, Richard Ashe; “Basil,” “Desmond O’Brien.” The Author is (1914) Staff Extension Lecturer of Oxford and London Universities. Has contributed a good deal to the Cornhill and to the Pall Mall Gazette, and is reviewer for Truth. Has written, besides the books noticed here, Love the Debt, A Drawn Game, A Coquette’s Conquest, and many others. Also a life of Swift. B. Co. Clare. Ed. at Ennis Coll. and T.C.D. He gave up in the eighties his living in the Church of England and began contributing to Freeman’s Journal, Truth, &c. “He is,” says W. P. Ryan in his The Irish Literary Revival, “intensely Celtic, but too candid to overlook the Celt’s failings.” For some time in the eighties he lived in Blackrock, Co. Dublin. See Mrs. Hinkson’s Reminiscences of Twenty-five Years, pp. 282-3.
⸺ THE WEARING OF THE GREEN. Pp. 299. (Chatto & Windus). 2s. 6d. 1886.
A story of the course of true love, in which the lovers are long kept apart by many untoward happenings. The writer’s sympathies and the characters of his story are Protestant, yet there is no hostility to Catholics, and one of the pleasantest characters in the book is Father Mac. One of the minor incidents of the story is connected with the Fenian conspiracy. The chief interest of the book lies, perhaps, in the drawing of the lesser characters. In his delineation of all the English personages the Author is unsparingly caustic. The book is brightly written; the conversation particularly good; there is a vein of sarcasm throughout, and plenty of incident. The author evidently sympathises with Irish grievances, and is proud of his country.
⸺ BELL BARRY. (Chatto). 2s. 1891.
“An exciting story, laid in I., then in Liverpool, and in part aboard a liner. The Irish servants and other minor characters ... provide a good deal of humorous talk.”—(Baker).
⸺ A GERALDINE. Two Vols. 1893. (Ward & Downey).