The central figure of this tale is a scion of the O’Donnells of Tyrconnell, proud, courteous, travelled, who has fought in the armies of Austria and of France, and finally that of England. He is a type of the old Catholic nobility, and his story is made to illustrate the working of the Penal laws. Nearly all the personages of the story are people of fashion, mostly titled. There is much elaborate character-study, and not a little social satire. The native Irish of the lower orders appear in the person of M’Rory alone, a humorous faithful old retainer, whose conversation is full of bulls. Lady Singleton, the meddling, showy, flippantly talkative woman of fashion, and Mr. Dexter, the obsequious, a West Briton of those days, are well drawn. The main purpose of the book, says the Author, was to exhibit Catholic disabilities. There are interesting descriptions of scenery along the Antrim coast and in Donegal. As fiction it is slow reading, yet Sir Walter Scott speaks highly of it.
⸺ FLORENCE MACARTHY. (N.Y.: Sadlier). 1.50. 1816.
Combines, as so many of Lady Morgan’s books do, political satire with a romantic love tale. A kidnapped heir asserts his claim to a peerage and estates and unwittingly woos the romantic Florence, to whom he had been betrothed in his youth. Mr. Fitzpatrick calls the book “an exceedingly interesting and erudite novel,” and tells us how, before attempting it, she had “saturated her memory with a large amount of reading which bore upon the subject of it.” The character of Counsellor Con Crawley constitutes a bitter attack on Lady Morgan’s unscrupulous enemy, John Wilson Croker. The half-mad schoolmaster, Terence Oge O’Leary, is a curious type.
⸺ THE O’BRIENS AND O’FLAHERTYS. Three eds. in one year. [1827]. (N.Y.: Haverty).
May be said to have for its object Catholic Emancipation, yet the author was no admirer of O’Connell, and in this book keen strokes of satire are aimed at the Jesuits, and even at the Pope. Mr. Fitzpatrick says that “though professedly a fiction it is really a work of some historical importance, and may be safely consulted in many of the details by statistic or historic writers.” He tells us also that it “contains a few coarse expressions; and, in common with its predecessors, exhibits a somewhat inconsistent love for republicanism and aristocracy.” The novel is the story of a young patriot who, expelled from Trinity College along with Robert Emmet and others, becomes a volunteer and a United Irishman, and is admitted to the councils of Tone, Napper Tandy, Rowan, and the rest. After ’98 (which is not described in detail) he goes to France, where he rises to be a General, and marries the heroine. The book depicts with vividness and fidelity the manners of the time (hence the occasional coarseness). There are lively descriptions of Castle society in the days of the Duke of Rutland. Lord Walter Fitzgerald was the original of “Lord Walter Fitzwalter.”
⸺ LES O’BRIEN ET LES O’FLAHERTY OU L’IRLANDE EN 1793 is the title of a French translation of the preceding by J. Cohen. Three Vols. (Paris: C. Gosselin). 1828.
⸺ DRAMATIC SCENES FROM REAL LIFE. Two Vols. (Saunder’s & Otley). [1833].
Contains a piece entitled “Mount Sackville.” “It possesses a great deal of her peculiar power, has much truth, and much good feeling, alloyed with some angry prejudice. There are some scenes inimitable for their racy humour, and the characters of Gallagher, the orange-agent, his ally the housekeeper, and Father Phil, are worthy the hand that sketched M’Rory and the Crawley family.... The Whiteboy scenes, though forcibly drawn, are perhaps too melodramatic. Shows much bitterness against the Repealers.”—(Dubl. Rev.).
MORIARTY, Denis Ignatius. Ed. by.
⸺ THE WIFE HUNTER AND FLORA DOUGLAS. Three Vols.[9] (Bentley). 1838.