⸺ ECCENTRICITY. Three Vols. (over 1,000 pp.). (Dubl.: Cumming). 1820.
An endless series of love affairs between charming ladies and wealthy gentlemen, all of the upper classes, very proper, very stilted, and dull. The eccentricity is on the part of an old soldier who is a misanthrope and a hermit, but resolves to return to normal life and renew acquaintance with his daughter. He descends upon the friend’s family in which he has left her, carries off another by mistake, &c. The plot never really moves on.
[8] So the name is given on the title-page, and it seems improbable that this Author is the same as the Author of the following item, first because there is a difference of thirty-four years between the dates, and secondly because the two books are wholly unlike. But the B. Museum Catal. assigns both to the same person.
M’NALLY, Louisa.
⸺ THE PIRATE’S FORT. Pp. 210. (Hodges & Smith). 1854.
The fort is Dunalong, on Inisherkin, in Baltimore Bay, a stronghold of the O’Driscoll’s towards close of 16th cent. English ship captured. O’D.’s natural son, a ferocious pirate, falls in love with captain’s daughter. She is true to her English officer. The beautiful daughter of O’D. saves her from his fury. Vengeance of the English—destruction of the fort—double wedding of the two fair maids to two English officers. A prominent rôle is assigned to money-grabbing, idle, besotted Franciscan friar.
MACNAMARA, Lewis.
⸺ BLIND LARRY: Irish Idylls. (Jarrold). 3s. 6d. 1897.
“Artless records of life among the very poor in West of Ireland, the fruit of kindly observation, and, obviously, essays in the Thrums style. Larry is a poor blind fiddler, whose one joy in life is his son, and he turns out a reproach to his father. “Katty’s Wedding” is a very Irish bit of farce, and “Mulligan’s Revenge” expresses the vindictive passions of the Celt, an episode of jealousy and crime, alleviated at the close by repentance and reconciliation.”—(Baker).