⸺ KILCARRA. Three Vols. (Blackwood). 1891.
The influence of a good and sweet-natured woman on selfish men, with the Land League agitation in Co. Galway for a background. The peasantry are depicted as wild and lawless and mere tools of the Land League, but as capable of much good. The shooting of landlords is sheer barbarism, no attempt being made by the Author to set forth its causes. The plot is furnished by the efforts of the hero, Capt. Martin Neville, to trace the murderer of a previous owner of the Kilcarra estate, and also by the story of his love for his cousin Ida, or rather hers for him. There is much about the relations between landlord and tenant.
SHARP, William, [see “FIONA MACLEOD.”]
SHEEHAN, M. F.
⸺ NEATH SUNNY SKIES: Stories of the Co. Waterford. Pp. 123. (Waterford News). 6d. 1912.
A series of simple tales well told and true to life.
SHEEHAN, Canon Patrick A., D.D. B. 1852. Educated at St. Colman’s, Fermoy, and Maynooth. Spent two years (1875-77) on English mission in Devonshire. Parish Priest of Doneraile from 1895 till his death in 1913. His books deal chiefly with Catholic clerical life in Ireland—a subject which he was the first to deal with from within. He brought to bear on the features and problems of Irish life a deeply thoughtful and cultured mind. He did not indulge in thoughtless panegyric of Irish virtues, but touched firmly, though sympathetically, upon our national shortcomings and failings. His ideals are of the loftiest, yet never of an unsubstantial and airy, kind. His style is influenced too much perhaps in his earlier books by his very wide reading in many literatures, but particularly in Greek, German, Italian, and English. Besides the novels mentioned here, he has published two books of studies and reflections, viz., Under the Cedars and the Stars, and Parerga; also a book of poems, Cithara Mea, and a selection of Early Essays and Lectures.
⸺ GEOFFREY AUSTIN, STUDENT. (Gill). 3s. 6d. Fifth ed., 1908.
Story of life in a secondary school, near Dublin, nominally controlled by the clergy, but in reality left to the care of a grinder of more than doubtful character. A most uncatholic worldliness prevails at Mayfield, and the standards of conduct and of religion are very low. Geoffrey’s faith is weakened and well-nigh ruined. The curtain falls upon him as he goes out to face the world, and we are left to conjecture his fate. Has been transl. into French under title Geoffroy.