Story of an Englishman who goes down to spend his holidays with the Rev. John Good, Curate of Coolgreany, somewhere in the Bog of Allen, six miles from Birr and six from Banagher. Chiefly concerned, apart from a few sporting incidents, with aspects of agrarian agitation. Traditional English Conservative standpoint, accentuated by ignorance of Irish history and present conditions, and by ludicrous misconceptions. Fanciful descriptions of moonlighting, in which the peasantry appear as a mixture of fools and ruffians. But little humour, and that unconscious. No objectionable matter from religious or moral standpoint.
⸺ BOFFIN’S FIND. Pp. 324. (Long). 6s. 1899 and 1906.
An exciting tale of Australian life in the fifties. One of the characters is a stage-Irishman of the earlier Lever type, who in one chapter relates his experiences with the Ribbonmen.
⸺ JOHN TOWNLEY. Pp. 346. (Drane). 1901.
A political novel, “the last of a trilogy of Irish disaffection.”—(Pref.). J. T. is an Anglican clergyman who becomes a Catholic and, later, a priest. He comes to Ireland, where he finds the priests immersed in politics and using the confessional for political purposes. He is involved in circumstances of a tragic kind, and to escape from a disagreeable situation he goes to S. Africa, where he reverts to Protestantism. Dwells much on boycotting, moonlighting and murder. Describes the Phœnix Park murders, the subsequent trial, and the murder of the informer. The interest is exclusively political.
TOTTENHAM, G. L.
⸺ TERENCE McGOWAN, the Irish Tenant. Two Vols. (Smith, Elder). 1870.
Depicts, from the landlord’s point of view, the land struggle in the sixties. This view-point is, in general, that “poor backward, barbarous, benighted Ireland” owed whatever good it possessed to the landlord class: the influence of the priest was evil: and Ireland’s troubles due mainly to the lawlessness and unreasonableness of the people and the weakness of the government. But the writer is not without knowledge of the people, and his pictures of life are probably true enough in the main. The story is well told, and the love story of Terence and Kathleen O’Hara and their sad fate is feelingly related. The book brings out well the evil results of the rule of a thoroughly unsympathetic landlord in the person of the English Mr. Majoribanks. An idea is given of how elections were conducted at the time. This Author wrote also Harry Egerton, Harcourt, and other novels.
TOWNSHEND, Dorothea.
⸺ THE CHILDREN OF NUGENTSTOWN and their Dealings with the Sidhe.[14] Pp. 176. (Nutt). 3s. 6d. Eight good illustr. by Ruth Cobb. 1911.