[18] E.g., “The Man with the Black Eye,” “The Rapparee,” and “The Double Prophecy.”
[19] Notably a periodical of fine national spirit which was run by Miss Alice Milligan and “Ethna Carbery,” The Shan Van Vocht (1896-1899).
II.—CURRENT PERIODICALS.
The Irish Monthly may fairly, I think, claim mention in the first place for, to the best of my knowledge, its forty-three years constitute a life longer than that of any other still surviving Irish literary review.[20] In it, under the sympathetic guidance and the kind encouragement of Father Matthew Russell, its founder and for forty years its editor, many authors well known to-day began the making of their literary reputations. It contains many serials, not a few of which have since appeared in book form. “The Wild Birds of Killeevy” first ran in its pages.
The Irish Rosary is in its nineteenth volume. It is one of the very few Irish periodicals that has succeeded in maintaining itself as a well illustrated magazine, and it has done so at the exceptionally low price of fourpence. Fiction forms a large proportion of its contents, which are never stodgy nor yet what is called goody-goody.
The Catholic Bulletin is comparatively a new-comer, but already quite a number of volumes, including Fr. Fitzgerald’s two books (q.v.), have been reprinted from its pages. Its tone is thoroughly Irish.
Then there are innumerable little periodicals which, unlike the three just mentioned, contain stories of an almost exclusively religious or moral character, such as the Annals of St. Antony, The Messenger of the Sacred Heart, &c.
The excellent Ireland’s Own, a popular weekly on the lines of Answers and Tit-Bits, deserves a word of mention. Its library of reprints is referred to elsewhere.
Besides these there are the weekly numbers of the daily papers already referred to and the periodicals devoted to Gaelic literature, a list of which will be found in the section of this Appendix, entitled Gaelic Epic and Romantic Literature.
In America many periodicals publish Irish fiction from time to time, but practically the only periodicals the contents of which are predominantly Irish are of an almost exclusively political character. The Catholic World has published Irish serials, e.g., in the seventies, “The Home Rule Candidate: a tale of New Ireland,” by the author of “The Little Chapel at Monamullin.” Several of Canon Sheehan’s novels first appeared in American periodicals.