⸺ THE FOSTER SISTERS. Three Vols. (Tinsley). 1871.
Opens in Sligo, near Lough Arrow. Largely concerned with an intricate family history and mysteries of identity. Scene soon shifts to Paris, where many of the personages have gone and where most of the action takes place. The chief interest is a very melodramatic murder in the secret room of the Chat Noir, and the subsequent tracing of the crime to the murderer, a typical stage villain. The story is pretty well told, but the conversations are most artificial.
LOVER, Samuel. B. in Dublin, 1797. Was not only a novelist but a musician, a painter, and a song-writer (he wrote some 300 songs, and composed the music for most of them). He ed. the Dublin National Magazine and the Saturday Magazine. D. 1868. See “Lives” by J. A. Symington and Bayle Bernard. “Lover,” says Mr. D. J. O’Donoghue, “is first and last an Irish humourist.” Readers should bear this fact in mind. His humour is of the gay, careless, rollicking type. He is sometimes coarse, but never merely dull. He does not caricature the Irish character, for his sympathies were strongly Irish; but wrote to amuse his readers, not to depict Irish life. He was often accused by his friends of exaggerating the virtues of his countrymen, and it may be admitted that he sometimes did so. “The chief defect of his novels,” says Maurice Francis Egan, q.v., “is that they were written with an eye on what the English reader would expect the Irish characters to do.”
⸺ RORY O’MORE. Pp. 452. (Constable). 3s. 6d. [1837]. (N.Y.: Dutton). 1.00. 1897.
Introduction and notes by D. J. O’Donoghue, who considers this to be Lover’s best long story. A tale of adventure in 1798, with a slight historical background. National in sentiment, without being unfairly biased. Contains some of Lover’s best humour, especially the endless drollery and whimsicalities of the hero, Rory. Some of the types are very true to life. There are passages of genuine pathos. Tries to prove that the more heinous atrocities in ’98 were due to a few desperadoes.
⸺ HANDY ANDY. Pp. 460. (Constable). 3s. 6d. Portrait of Lover. [1842]. 1898. Critical Introd. and Notes by D. J. O’Donoghue. (N.Y.: Dutton). 1.00.
A series of side-splitting misadventures of a comic, blundering Irishman. Does not pretend to be a picture of real Irish life, yet, though exaggerated, it is not without truth. Besides Andy’s adventures there are scenes from the life of the harum-scarum gentry, uproarious dinners, a contested election, practical jokes. The characters include peasants, duellists, hedge-priests, hedge-schoolmasters, beggars, and poteen distillers. There is a good deal of vulgarity.
⸺ TREASURE TROVE; or, He Would be a Gentleman. Pp. 469. (Constable). 3s. 6d. [1844]. Many since. (Boston: Little, Brown). 1.00. 1899.
Critical introduction by D. J. O’Donoghue. Adventures of a somewhat stagey hero, Ned Corkery, with the Irish Brigade in the service of France and of the Young Pretender. Fontenoy, and the ’45 in Scotland, are introduced. The novel, says the editor, can only be called pseudo-historical. The writer had but imperfectly mastered the history, and treats it unconvincingly. The humour is below the author’s usual standard, but the interest is well sustained. It is coarse and vulgar in parts.