Scene: near Tralee, in Kerry. Patrick D. contracts a runaway marriage with a beautiful peasant girl. He falls heavily in debt, finds that his mother, on whom he had relied, is even more heavily involved, and that the only way out is a marriage with a rich heiress. Patrick basely yields, and the poor wife consents to “disappear,” but in a strange way, connected with a certain “silent room” in the D. mansion, whose secret we shall not divulge, things right themselves at last. Peter Maloney, Patrick’s faithful foster-brother, is curiously similar to Griffin’s Danny Mann. The moral tone is high.
⸺ PEGGY FROM KERRY. Pp. 330. (Chambers). 6s. Pretty cover and eight coloured Illustr. by Miss A. Anderson. 1912.
Peggy is the daughter of a poor Irish peasant and of an officer. She is now an orphan, but has been adopted by an English friend of her father’s and sent to an English boarding school. The story is made up of plots and petty jealousies amongst the schoolgirls. Peggy, though much ridiculed for her dreadful brogue, triumphs over her special enemy and the latter’s followers and ends by being popular and happy.
⸺ KITTY O’DONOVAN. Pp. 330. (Chambers). 5s. Six good coloured Illustr. by J. Finnemore. 1912.
Doings in a select English boarding school, where the pretty heroine from Kerry comes scatheless through the spiteful plots of her jealous rivals, and is crowned Queen of the May. There is a pretty description of Kerry scenery, but most of the action takes place outside of Ireland.
⸺ THE PASSION OF KATHLEEN DUVEEN. Pp. 284. (Stanley Paul). 6s. 1913.
“A tale of the novelette class about a young Irishman forced into crime and faithlessness to his young wife by his family’s need of money.”—[Times Lit. Suppl.]. Another “Colleen Bawn” story. Brilliant young officer marries penniless girl. Financial straits. Murder; and nemesis.
⸺ AT THE BACK OF THE WORLD. (Hurst & Blackett). 6s. n.d.
Scene: “Arranmore,” on the sea coast of Cork. Sheila O’Connor is long sundered from her lover by the suspicion, shared by herself, that he is the murderer of her father, the Squire. Whether they are ever united again we leave the reader to discover. There are many scenes that show us the life of the peasantry, in particular their religious customs. The book seems free from bias, and the brogue is not exaggerated.
[MEANY, Mary L.].