Life
1794-1869; b. Prolusk [contemp. var. Prillisk], nr. Clogher, Clogher Valley,
Co. Tyrone, 20th Feb. (Shrove Tuesday); son of small farmer, native speaker,
and accomplished story-teller, and Mary [née Kelly], a gifted Irish
singer; experienced arms-searching raids on house by militia (instigated
by false report connected with toy gun given to Carleton by Sam Nelson),
in which a sister was jabbed in the side with a bayonet; educated at first
by Pat Frayne (Matt Kavanagh in the stories), and later at another hedge-school
run by one O’Beirne in Findramore prior to the return of Frayne and
the resumption of Carleton’s schooling under him; again attended
Findramore on family’s removal to Nurchasy; next entered the school
of a ‘classical blockhead’ and a spoilt priest, ‘cruel
and hypocritical to an extent which I have never yet seen equalled’;
family moved to Springtown - the house being still extant - with farm
of 16 acres, 1808; set out as poor scholar for Munster, but turned back
at Granard; participated in convivial life of community; admitted to classical
school of priestly relation nr. Glasslough, Co. Monaghan; returned to
family (then very much reduced’), having been evicted in 1813; prob.
joined Ribbonmen; gave up the idea of priesthood after a visit to Lough
Derg; fell in love with Anne Duffy; read Gil Blas [trans. Smollett]
by chance, and acquired passion for adventure; travelled to Co. Louth,
in house of a priest related to the parish priest in Springtown; tutored
family of Piers Murphy, br. Corcreagh [Co. Louth]; proceeded to Dublin
as tutor, arriving with 2s. 9d in his pocket; claimed to have spent his
first nights sharing lodgings with beggars; sought work as an animal stuffer
(using potato and meal for stuffing); applied to join a regiment addressing
his application to the colonel in Latin; took teaching work in a Mr Kane’s
Academy; found work at Erasmus Smith schools in Dublin and Mullingar;
m. Jane Anderson, a Protestant 1822 [var. 1820]; offered his services
to Robert Peel to combat Emancipation and Catholicism in Ireland; taken
up by Caesar Otway, who accepted his ‘A Pilgrimage to Saint Patrick’s
Purgatory’ for publication in The Christian Examiner and Church
of Ireland Gazette (April-May 1828), signed ‘W’ [err. Wilton],
often confused with less violently polemical ‘Lough Derg Pilgrimage’;
subsequent works include Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry
(1830) - ‘two unpretentious volumes written by a peasant’s son'
- published anonymously by William Curry in Dublin, and set in Prillisk
[viz., Prolusk], Towney [viz., Tonagh], and Springtown, Co. Tyrone; ran
to 50 edns. before his death; a second series appeared in 1833 [Hayley
var. 1832], and was equally acclaimed; a definitive new edn., appeared
in 23-part monthly pamphlets at a shilling each, and then in two elaborately
bound volumes, 1843-1844, with an autobiographical and discursive Introduction
by the author, and engraved illustrations plates by Phiz, Subson, Wrightson,
Franklin, MacManus, Lee, and Gilbert; eleven impressions to 1870; other
stories appeared in Tales of Ireland (1834); published by Duffy
in his Parlour Library of Ireland; issued the novels Fardorougha the
Miser (1839), first serialised in Dublin University Magazine,
1837-38; also contributed work to The Dublin Family Magazine; The
National Magazine; The Dublin University Review and Quarterly;
The Citizen; the Irish Penny Journal (from 1844); The
Independent; commenced writing for The Nation, whose 7th issue
contradicted (at his request) the rumour that he was writing the whole;
Valentine M’Clutchy the Irish Agent (1845), offered for serialisation
to The Nation, but Davis preferred to see it appear as a book,
features Solomon M’Slime, Darby O’Drive; Rev. Mr. Lucre, Fr.
Roche, in a sympathetic port of a priest; French translation in L’Univers
(ed. Louis Veuillot); Carleton in England at the outbreak of the Famine;
The Black Prophet (1847), based on famines of 1812 and 1822, and
first published in eight parts in Dublin University Magazine during
1846; Willy Reilly and his Dear Colleen Bawn (1855), his most popular
production (reaching 30 editions); Redmond, Count O’Hanlon, the
Irish Rapparee (1862); a petition for a Govt. pension signed by Maria
Edgeworth, among others elicited a Civil List Pension of £200 under the
administration of Lord John Russell in 1848; his last full-length writing,
The Red-haired Man’s Wife, serialised in Carlow College
Magazine, 1870 (but of disputed authorship); wrote that he ‘studiously
avoided that intolerable Scoto-Hibernic jargon which pierces the ear so
unmercifully’; d. Jan., at Sandford, Co. Dublin; bur. in Mount Jerome
Cemetery off the Main Ave., under a miniature obelisk raised 'to mark
the place wherein rest the remains of one whose memory needs neither graven
stone nor sculptured marble to preserve it from oblivion’ (restored
in 1989); his wife subsequently buried there also; an autobiography (2
vols. 1896) was completed and published by D. J. O’Donoghue, who
received the manuscript from Carleton's sisters; an oil portrait by J.
J. Slattery, held in the National Gallery of Ireland, is said by his widow
to be ‘the most truthful one’; characterised by Yeats as ‘the
greatest novelist of Ireland by right of the most Celtic eyes that ever
gazed from under the brown of a storyteller’ (Stories from Carleton,
1889); an Annual William Carleton Summer School has met at Corkck House
- itself cited in Carleton's writings - in the shadow of Knockmany, Co.
Tyrone, since 1992; a Carleton Newsletter is published at Florida
University; a son, William, emigrated to Australia. DNB JMC DIW DIB
DIH DIL MKA RAF NCBE SUTH FDA DUB OCIL
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Traits and Stories of The Irish Peasantry, 2 vols. (Dublin: Curry 1830) [‘Father Butler’, from Christian Examiner, Aug.-Dec. 1828; ‘A Pilgrimage to Patrick’s Purgatory’ later in Traits ...&c.]; Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, 2 vols. (Dublin: Wm. Curry 1830), xii, 275pp, and 304pp. [Vol. 1, ‘Ned McKeown’, ‘The Three Tasks’, ‘Shane [sic] Fadh’s Wedding’, ‘Larry McFarland’s Wake’, ‘The Battle of the Factions’; Vol. 2, ‘The Party Fight and Funeral’; ‘The Hedge School’; ‘The Station’, prev. in Christian Examiner, Jan.-April-June 1829]; Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, 2nd Ser., 3 vols. (Dublin: William Frederick Wakeman 1833), viii, 471pp, 475pp., 448pp. [Vol. 1, ‘The Midnight Mass’; ‘The Donogh; or, The Horse-Stealers’ (prev. in the National Magazine, Dec. 1830); ‘Phil Purcel, The Pig Driver’; ‘An Essay on Irish Swearing’ (generally incorp. with seq.); ‘The Geography of An Irish Oath’; Vol. 2, ‘The Lianhan Shee’ (prev. in Christian Examiner, Nov. 1830); ‘The Poor Scholar’; ‘Wildgoose Lodge’; ‘Tubber Derg; or, The Red Well’; Vol. 3, ‘Denis O’Shaughnessy going to Maynooth’ (prev. in Christian Examiner, Sept.-Dec. 1831); ‘Phelim O’Toole’s Courtship’; Notes]; Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, 5 vols. (London: Baldwin & Craddock 1836); Traits & Stories of the Irish Peasantry: With an Autobiographical Introduction, Illustrative notes and Graphic Illustrations on Wood and Steel, by Phiz, MacManus, and Franklin, 2 vols. (Dublin: Curry; London: Orr 1843), incl. additionally ‘General Introduction’, and ‘Neal Malone’ [prev. in Dublin University Review & Quarterly, Jan. 1833, and book-form in Tales of Ireland, 1834]. Other Edns. with variant contents incl. Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (London: Maxwell [n.d.]), ill. Daniel Maclise, 1 vol., 780pp. contains also ‘The Silver Acre (Illustrated. London Magazine, 1853); ‘The Fair Emyvale’ (Illustrated London Magazine, 1853); ‘Master and Scholar’ (Illustrated London Magazine, 1853) [all these three separated in book-form]; Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, 2 vols. in 1 [whole ser. 10 vols.] (London: Ward, Lock & Co., [c1853]), Vol. 1, 399pp.; Vol. 2, 381pp., with pref. ded. of ‘the new edition of all my works’ ded. to Isaac Butt; Tales of Ireland (Dublin: Curry 1834), xiii, 366pp., ill. [‘The Death of a Devotee’ (prev. in Christian Examiner, Oct. 1829); ‘The Priest’s Funeral’ (ibid., Jan.-Feb. 1830); ‘Neal Malone’ (prev. in Dublin University Review & Quarterly, Jan. 1833); ‘The Brothers’ (prev. in Christian Exam. March-June 1830); ‘The Illicit Distiller’ (ibid. Dec. 1830); ‘The Dream of a Broken Heart’ (prev. in Dublin University Review & Quarterly, April 1833); ‘Lachlin Murray and the Blessed Candle’ (prev. in Christian Examiner, Aug. 1830); also D. J. O’Donoghue, ed., Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, 4 vols. (London: Dent 1896).
Other works, Father Butler; The Lough Dearg Pilgrim (Dublin: William Curry 1829), iv, 302pp; Popular Tales and Legends of the Irish Peasantry, edited by Samuel Lover, contains Carleton’s ‘Alley Sheridan’ (prev. National Magazine, Nov. 1830), and ‘Laying a Ghost’ (ibid., Jan. 1831); Fardorougha the Miser; or, The Convicts of Lishnamona (Dublin: Curry 1839), x, 468pp (prev. in Dublin University Magazine, Feb. 1837, IX, 50, p.212, to Feb. 1838, XI, 61, p.250); The Fawn of Springvale, The Clarionet, and Other Tales, 3 vols. (Dub. Wm. Curry 1841), viii, 367pp, 351pp., 328pp. [Vol. 1: Preface, ‘Jane Sinclair’ (prev. in Dublin University Magazine, Sept. 1836, VIII, 45, p.334 to Dec. 1836, VIII, 48, pp.702-21), ‘Lha Dhu’; Vol. 2, ‘The Clarionet’, ‘The Dead Boxer’ (prev. in Dublin University Magazine, Dec. 1833, II, 12 p.671; Vol. 3, ‘The Misfortunes of Barney Bradley’ (prev. in Dublin University Magazine, Jan. 1841, XVII, 97, p.80 to May 1841, XVII, 101, pp.585-98; and ‘Resurrection of Barney Bradley’, in Dublin University Magazine Feb. 1834, III, 12, p.177); Art Maguire; or, The Broken Pledge: A Narrative (Dublin: J. Duffy 1845), xi, 252pp.; Parra Sastha; or, The History of Paddy-Go-Easy and His Wife Nancy (Dublin: Duffy 1845), xvi, 198pp; Rody the Rover; or, The Ribbonman (Dublin: Duffy 1845), iv, 244pp.; Characteristic Sketches of Ireland and the Irish, with S[amuel] Lover and Mrs Hall (Dublin: Hardy & Sons 1845), 288pp. [‘The Horse Stealers (prev. in Traits &c, 1833); ‘Owen McCarthy’ (prev. in National Magazine, as ‘The Landlord and the Tenant’, ibid. April 1831); ‘Squire Warnock’ (prev. in Pop. Tales, 1834, as ‘Laying the Ghost’; ‘The Abduction’ (prev. in Pop. Tales, as ‘Alley Sheridan’); ‘Sir Turlough’, poems (prev. in National Magazine, Nov. 1830); Tales and Sketches illustrating the Character, Usages, Traditions, Sports and Pastimes of the Irish Peasantry [later issued as Tales and Stories of the Irish Peasantry] (Dublin: Duffy 1845), ix, 393pp. [orig. as magazine of 1840; ‘Mickey McRorey the Irish Fiddler’; ‘Buckramback [sic] the Country Dancing-Master’; ‘Mary Murray the Irish Match-Maker’; ‘Ben Pentland or the Gauger Outwitted’; ‘The Fate of Frank McKenna’; ‘The Rival Kempers, ‘Frank Martin and the Fairies’; ‘A Legend of Knockmany’; ‘Rose Moan the Irish Midwife’; ‘Talbot and Gaynor Irish Pipers’; ‘Frank Finnegan [sic] the Foster-Brother’; ‘Tom Gressier [sic] the Irish Senachie’; ‘The Castle of Aughentain or a Legend of the Brown Goat’; ‘Barney McHaigney the Irish Prophecy Man’ (all except ‘Talbot and Gaynor’ in Irish Penny Journal 1840-41); ‘Moll Roe’s Marriage or the Pudding Bewitched’ (prev. in The Citizen, 17 March 1841); ‘Barney Brady’s Goose or Dark Doings at Slathberg’ (prev. in Dublin University Magazine, XI, 15, May 1838, p.604); ‘Condy Cullen or the Parent’s Trial’ (ibid., 8 June 1840); ‘The Three Wishes (Dublin University Magazine, XIV, 83, Nov. 1838, p.600); ‘The Irish Rake, Stories of Second Sight and Apparition’]; Valentine McClutchy, The Irish Agent, or Chronicles of Castle Cumber Property, 3 vols. (Dublin: Duffy 1845), xii, 300, 318, & 336pp., with plates by Phiz; The Black Prophet: A Tale of Irish Famine (London & Belfast: Simms & McIntyre 1847), xi, 455pp. (prev. in Dublin University Magazine, May 1846, XXVII, 161, p.600, to Dec. 1846, XXVIII, 168, pp.717-47); also Timothy Webb, intro., The Black Prophet [rep. of 1847 ed.] (Shannon: IUP 1972); The Emigrants of Ahadarra, A Tale of Irish Life (London & Belfast: Simms & McIntyre 1848), vii, 309pp.; The Tithe Proctor, A Novel, Being a Tale of the Tithe Rebellion in Ireland (London: Simms & McIntyre 1848), with The Hand and Word by Griffin, xvi, 288pp.; Red Hall; or, The Baronet’s Daughter, 3 vols. (London: Saunders & Otley, 1852); The Squanders of Castle Squander, 2 vols. (London: Illustrated London Library, 1852); Willie Reilly and His Dear Colleen Bawn, 3 vols. (London: Hope, 1855) [prev. in the Independent, London, Dec. 1850-Jan 1851]; The Silver Acre and Other Tales (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1862) [short fiction from the 1850s]; The Black Baronet (Dublin: Duffy 1857) [reiss. The Baronet’s Daughter]; The Evil Eye [or The Black Spectre] (Dublin: Duffy 1860); The Double Prophecy [or Trials of the Heart] (Dublin: Duffy 1862); Redmond Count O’Hanlon, the Irish Rapparee (Dublin: James Duffy 1862; rep. Duffy 1886); The Red-haired Man’s Wife (Dublin Sealy [&c.]; London: Simpkin 1889); also ‘The Late John Banim’, in The Nation, 23 Sept. 1843, pp.794-95 [see Banim, Rx.]
Autbiography, David J. O’Donoghue, The Life of William Carleton: being his autobiography and letters, and an account of his life and writings, from the point at which the autobiogrpahy breaks off [...] with an introduction by Mrs Cashel Hoey, 2 vols. (London: Downey & Co. 1896), viii, 362pp., [1] lf of pls. [i.e., port. in each], 21 cm.; The Autobiography of William Carleton (London: MacGibbon & Kee 1968), with a preface by Patrick Kavanagh; also William Carleton, An Autobiography [1896], with a Foreword by Benedict Kiely (Belfast: White Row Press 1996), 248pp. [facs. of D. J. O’Donoghue Edn., 1896; Kiely foreword, pp.1-13];
Poetry: ‘Retrospections’, signed ‘Wilton’, in Christian Examiner ( Sept. 1828); ‘Willy Reilly’, in Charles Gavan Duffy, 1845, ed., Ballad Poetry of Ireland [1845], ‘Farewell’, in The Nation (18 Dec. 1858); et. al.
Drama: Irish Manufacture, or Bob McGawley’s Project (Theatre Royal, 25 March 1841), of which only the prologue was printed, in The Warder (April 3 1841).
Modern reprint editions: J. O’Donoghue, intro., The Black Prophet: A Tale of the Irish Famine [first edn. 1847] (London: Lawrence 1899), ill. Jack Yeats; another edn., The Black Prophet [Hibernia: Literature and Nation in Victorian Ireland] (Poole: Woodstock Books/Cassell 1996), 455pp.; Robert Lee Wolff, ed., Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry [facs. rep.] (NY: Garland 1979); Barbara Hayley, ed., Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, Vol. I & II [rep. of 1844 edn.] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1990); Tess Hurson, ed., Inside the Margins: A Carleton Reader (Belfast: Lagan Press 1992), 207pp.; Maurice Harmon, ed. and intro., Wildgoose Lodge and Other Stories (Cork: Mercier Press 1973), 119pp.
Garland Facsimile Reprints, ed. Robert Lee Wolff): The Black Prophet: A Tale of the Irish Famine [facsimile of 1847 edn.](NY: Garland 1979); Father Butler [and] The Lough Dearg Pilgrim: Being Sketches of Irish Manners [facsimile of 1829 edn.] (NY: Garland 1979); Tales of Ireland [facsimile of 1834 edn.] (NY: Garland 1979); Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry [facs. rep.] (NY: Garland 1979); Valentine McClutchy, The Irish Agent (NY: Garland, 1979), xii, 468pp.
Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (1st ser. 1830; 2nd ser. 1833; complete ed. in 2 vols.; 1843-44), contains ‘The Lough Derg Pilgrim’; two novella-length works, ‘Going to Maynooth’ and ‘The Poor Scholar’; short tales, ‘The Three Tasks’, and ‘The Lianhan Shee’; and accounts of peasant traditions, ‘Shane Fadh’s Wedding’, ‘Larry McFarland’s Wake’; also ‘Phil Purcel the Pig-Driver’ and ‘The Wildgoose Lodge’ (this story in the first person), et. al. ded. [Lord] John Russell, editor of Moore’s Memoirs, Journals and Correspondence (1853-56); The Black Prophet, A Tale of Irish Famine (1847), first published serially in the Dublin University Magazine from May to December, 1846; Tales and Sketches Illustrating the Character, Usages, Traditions, Sports and Pastimes of the Irish Peasantry (1845), a collection of twenty one short prose pieces by William Carleton, including the characters Buckram Back, ‘the Country Dancing Master’, Mary Murray, ‘the Irish Match-Maker’, Tom Gressley, ‘the Irish Sennachie’, and Barney M’Haigney, ‘the Irish Prophecy Man’; all appeared in the Irish Penny Journal, 1840-41; dedicated to Charles Gavan Duffy, editor of The Nation. Three novels written in 1845 for the ‘Parlour Library of Ireland’ series published by James Duffy, and promoted by The Nation, Art Maguire; or, The Broken Pledge (1845), temperance novel [formerly a shorter version, ‘The Broken Oath’, appeared in Christian Examiner, in 1828]; Rody the Rover (1845); Parra Sastha; or, The History of Paddy Go-Easy and His Wife Nancy (1845) [viz, Nancy M’Bride] for James Duffy, publ., to replace Davis’s projected life of Tone. [BML to 1956 LISTS 72 CARLETON TITLES, including contemporary and posthumous reprints, and Poor Scholar, the study by Benedict Kiely.]
Traits and Stories ofThe Irish Peasantry byWilliam Carleton. A New Edition with an autobiographical introduction, explanatory notes, and numerous illustrations on wood and steel, by Harvey, Phiz, Franklin, Macmanus, Gilbert, and other Artists of Eminence. Vol. I. WILLIAM CURRY, JUN., and Co., DUBLIN, and WILLIAM S. ORR AND Co., LONDON. MDCCCXLIII [1843]. pp.xxiv, 427; 22 wood and steel pls.; Vol. II, Do., pp.1-430; 15 more pls., including as the first ‘Prillusk’, the author’s birthplace. CONTENTS, Vol. I, Autobiographical Introduction; Ned M’Keown; The Three Tasks; Shane Fadh’s Wedding; Larry McFarland’s Wake; The Battle of the Factions; The Station; The Party Fight and Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim; The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh; or, The Horse Stealers; Phil Purcel the Pig-driver. Vol. II, Geography of an Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee; Going to Maynooth; Phelim O’Toole’s Courtship The Poor Scholar; Wildgoose Lodge; Tubber Derg; or, The Red Well; Neal Malone. [Copy in Library of Herbert Bell, Belfast; same in cloth, Cathach 1996-76 @ £120]
Amusing Irish Tales by author of The Colleen Bawn, Traits and Stories [… &c.] 4th edn. (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co.; Glasgow: Thomas D. Morison [n.d. 1889-90), 256pp.; Editorial Note [pp,.5-6], unsigned; CONTENTS: ‘Buckram Back, the Country Dancing Master’; ‘Mary Murray, the Irish Match-maker’; ‘Bob Pentland, the Irish Smuggler, or The Gauger Outwitted’; ‘Tom Gressiey [sic], the Irish Sennachie, or The Origin of the name of Gordon’; ‘Barney M’Haigney, the Irish Prophecy Man’; Fin M’Coul, The Knockmany Giant’; ‘Around Ned’s Fireside, or The Story of the Squire’; ‘The Irish Student, or How The Protestant Church was Invented by Luther and the Devil’; ‘Mickey M’Rorey, The country Fiddler’; Rose Moan, The Country Mid-Wife; Corney Keho’s Baby, The Irish Christening’; ‘Barney Brady Goose, Mysterious Doings at Slathbeg’; Condy Cullen, And How He defeated the Exciseman’; Phil Purcel, The Connaught Pig-Driver’; Father Philemy, The Holding of the Station’ [241].
The Works of William Carleton, Colliers Unabridged Edn., Vol. I [of 2 Vols.] (NY: P. F. Collier Publ. 1880 [1881]) [full chapter contents as per each work on general contents page]. CONTENTS: ‘Willy Reilly’; ‘Fardorougha the Miser’; ‘The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles of Ballytrain’; ‘The Evil Eye or, the Black Spectre’; ‘The Black Prophet, a Tale of Irish Famine’; ‘Wildgoose Lodge’ [with additional note]; ‘Tubber Derg; or, The Red Well’; ‘Neal Malone’; ‘Art Maguire; or, The Broken Pledge’; with 40 full-page ills. Reprints Preface to First Edn. of Willy Reilly, printed here, gives full version of "Ballad of Willy Reilly and his Fair Colleen Bawn", noting ‘a good deal of rude vigour’ and ‘a kind of artistic skill’.
Mercier Editions: Maurice Harmon, ed. & intro., Wildgoose Lodge and Other Stories [Mercier Irish Classics Vol. 1] (Cork: Mercier Press 1973), 119pp.; styled ‘one of eight vols. Containing a complete and unabridged edition of William Carleton’s Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry. CONTENTS, Wildgoose Lodge’ [1]; Ned M’Keown [21]’ The Lianhan Shee’ [50]; ‘The Lough Derg Pilgrim[ [81]. Further vols. in the series are, Vol 2: Denis O’Shaugnessy Goes to Maynooth, 144pp.; Vol. 3: Phelim O’Toole’s Courtship and Other Stories; Vol. 4: The Party Fight and Funeral; Vol. 5, The Battle of the Factions and Other Stories; Vol. 6, Poor Scholar; Vol. 7, The Station and Other Stories; Vol. 8, Tubber Derg or the Red Well. [No further editions issued in this series.]
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Criticism
W. B. Yeats, Introduction, Stories from Carleton [Camelot Series] (London: Walter Scott 1889).
David J. O’Donoghue, The Life of William Carleton: being his autobiography and letters, and an account of his life and writings, from the point at which the autobiography breaks off [...]; introduced by Mrs Cashel Hoey, 2 vols. (London: Downey & Co. 1896), viii, 362pp.
Rose Shaw, Carleton’s Country, Foreword [preface] by Shane Leslie (Dublin: Talbot Press 1930).
John Montague, ‘Tribute to Carleton’ [var. ‘William Carleton: The Fiery Gift’], The Bell (April 1952). pp.13-21.
Benedict Kiely, The Poor Scholar: A Study of William Carleton (London: Sheed & Ward 1947; Dublin: Talbot 1972), 164pp, and Do., rep. edn. Wolfhound 1997), 208pp.
Thomas Flanagan, The Irish novelists 1800-1850 (Columbia UP 1958).
Anthony Cronin, ed. and intro., The Courtship of Phelim O’Toole: Six Irish Tales (1962).
Richard Morrison, ‘A Note on William Carleton, in Missouri University Review, 3 (Spring 1965), pp.215-26.
Patrick Kavanagh, preface to The Autobiography (MacGibbon & Kee 1968).
Eileen Ibarra-Sullivan, Realistic Accounts of the Irish Peasantry in Four Novels of William Carleton (Univ. of Florida dissert. 1969).
Eileen Ibarra, ‘William Carleton: An Introduction', Éire-Ireland, 5, 1 (Spring 1970), pp.81-85.
Robert L. Meredith, ‘William Carleton and Charles Lever’, in Carleton Newsletter 3, 2 (1972), pp.11-14.
André Boué, ‘William Carleton and the Irish People’, in The Clogher Record, VI, 1 [?1974], pp.66-70.
Margaret Chesnutt, Studies in the Short Stories of William Carleton [Gothenberg studies in English 34] (Goteburg 1976).
Eileen Sullivan, ‘William Carleton, Artist and Reality’, in Éire Ireland, 12, 1 (1977), pp.130-40.
André Boué, William Carleton 1794-1869, romancier irlandais 1794-1869 (Paris: Publs. de la Sorbonne 1978), xx, 417pp.
John Cronin, ‘William Carleton, The Black Prophet’, in The Anglo-Irish Novel: The Nineteenth Century [Vol. I] (Belfast: Appletree Press 1980), pp.83-9.
Robert Lee Wolff, William Carleton, Irish Peasant Novelist: A Preface to His Fiction (NY: Garland 1980), 156pp.
Alan Warner, ‘William Carleton’, A Guide to Anglo-Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1981), pp.72-78.
Anthony Cronin, ‘William Carleton: Idyll and Bloodshed’, in Heritage Now: Irish Literature in English (Dingle: Brandon 1982), pp.37-46.
Barbara Hayley, Carleton’s Traits and Stories and the Nineteenth-Century Anglo-Irish Tradition (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1983).
Barbara Hayley, A Bibliography of the Writings of William Carleton (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1985).
Barry Sloan, The Pioneers of Anglo-Irish Fiction, 1800-1850 [Irish Literary Studies 21] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe NJ: Barnes & Noble 1986).
Harold Orel, ‘William Carleton: Attitudes toward the English and the Irish’, in Wolfgang Zach & Heinz Kosok eds., Literary Interrelations: Ireland, England and the World, Vol. III [National Images and Stereotypes] (Tübingen: Guntar Narr Verlag, 1987), pp.85-94.
Norman Vance, ‘The Literatures of Victorian Ireland, William Carleton and Thomas D’Arcy McGee’, in Irish Literature: A Social History, Tradition, Identity and Difference (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990)[Chap. 4].
Benedict Kiely, ed., [i.e., intro.] William Carleton, Fardarougha the Miser or the Conflicts of Lisnamona (1839; rep. Belfast: Appletree 1993), 228pp.
Margaret [Peggy] O’Brien, ‘William Carleton, The Lough Derg Exile’, in Irish Writing, Exile and Subversion, eds., Paul Hyland & Neil Sammells (London 1991), pp.82-97.
Julian Moynihan, ‘William Carleton (1794-1869): The Native Informer’, in Anglo-Irish: The Literary Imagination in a Hyphenated Culture (Princeton UP 1995) [Chap. III], pp.43-7.
Chris Morash, ‘William Carleton and the End of Writing’, in Writing the Irish Famine (Clarendon Press 1995), pp.155-97.
Declan Kiberd, ‘Confronting Famine: Carleton’s Peasantry’, in Irish Classics (London: Granta 2000), pp.265-86.
R. F. Foster, The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland (London: Penguin 2001, 2002), pp.113-26.
A. N. Jeffares, ‘Place, Personality and the Irish Writer’, in Place, Personality and the Irish Writer, ed. Andrew Carpenter (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1977), pp.11-40.
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, Vol. 1 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1988) [passim; see also bibliography in Vol. 2, pp.95-102].
Thomas Flanagan, The Irish Novelists, NY Columbia UP 1958, p.263.
W. B. Yeats [criticism on Carleton], in John P. Frayne, ed., Uncollected Prose by W. B. Yeats (London: Macmillan 1970), Vol. 1: ‘William Carleton’ [review of Red-Haired Man’s Wife: Scots Observer, Oct. 19, 1889], p.141; ‘Carleton as an Irish Historian’ [Nation, Jan. 11, 1890], p.166; ‘Irish National Literature, I: From Callanan to Carleton’ [Bookman, July 1895], p.359; ‘William Carleton’ [review of Carleton’s autobiography, in Bookman, March 1896], p.394.
Maurice Francis Egan, ‘On Irish Novels’, in Catholic University Bulletin, Vol. 10, No. 3, 1904, p.329-41.
John Eglinton, ‘Irish Books’, in Anglo-Irish Essays, 1917, p.82.
W. B. Yeats, “William Carleton”, in Stories from Carleton (1889), rep. as Appendix to Mary Helen Thuente, ed., Representative Irish Tales [1891] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1979), pp.363-64.
W. B. Yeats, Review of The Red-Haired Man’s Wife, Scots Observer, 19 Oct. 1889; Frayne, 1970, p.145.
Geert Lernout, ed., The Crows Behind the Plough: History and Violence in Anglo-Irish Poetry and Drama (Amsterdam: Rodopi 1991, p.149; also in R. F. Foster, The Irish Story, Penguin 2001, p.117.
A. P. Graves, Irish Literary Studies (1913).
G. C. Duggan, The Stage Irishman (Dublin: Talbot 1937), p.294.
Shane Leslie, The Irish Tangle for English Readers (1946), p.106.
Thomas Flanagan, The Irish Novelists 1800-1850, Columbia UP 1958, p.257.
Flann O’Brien, The Hair of the Dogma (London: MacGibbon 1977), p.102:
Louis de Paor, ‘Myles na gCopaleen agus Drochshampla na dDealeabhar’, in The Irish Review, 23, Winter 1998, p.29.
Benedict Kiely, The Poor Scholar (1947; rep. edn. 1972), pp v, 16, 81, 149, 177.
Patrick Kavanagh, The Autobiography, 1968, p.9.
Anthony Cronin, (Intro. to Courtship of Phelim O’Toole, 1962).
P. J. Drury, Irish Studies, 1, Cambridge UP, 1980, p.11.).
James Cahalan, Great Hatred, Little Room, The Irish Historical Novel (Syracuse UP/Gill & Macmillan 1983).
John Montague, (‘Tribute to William Carleton’, The Bell, 1952, p.13.
John Montague, ‘William Carleton, The Fiery Gift’, rep. from The Bell, in The Figure in the Cave (1989), p. 84.
Barbara Hayley, Carleton’s Traits and Stories and the Nineteenth-Century Anglo-Irish Tradition (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1983) J. J. Hogan, The English Language in Ireland (Dublin: Educational Co. of Ireland 1907).
Barry Sloan, Pioneers of Anglo-Irish Fiction, 1984, p.172.
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; 1984).
Seamus MacAnnaidh, ‘Shpayke, Brogue, Dialect, Irish, and Carleton’, in The Spark, 3 (Spring-Summer 1992).
Tim Webb, Introduction to The Black Prophet (Shannon: IUP Edn. 1972).
Anthony Cronin, ‘William Carleton: Idyll and Bloodshed’, in Heritage Now: Irish Literature in English (Dingle: Brandon 1982).
David Krause, ‘A Tragic and Comic World of Compassion’, in Irish Literary Supplement (Spring 1994), pp.32-34.
Terry Eagleton, ‘Form and Ideology in the Anglo-Irish Novel’, in Mary Massoud, ed., Literary Relations: Ireland, Egypt and the Far East (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1996), pp.135-46.
Rolf Loeber & Magda Stouthamer-Loebber, ‘Fiction available to and written for cottages and their children’, in Bernadette Cunningham and Máire Kennedy, eds., The Experience of Reading: Irish Historical Perspectives (Dublin: Rare Books Group [… &c.] 1999).
Robert Tracy, review-article on André Boué, William Carleton: romancier irlandais, 1794-1869 (Sorbonne 6; Paris: Publs. de la Sorbonne 1978), xx, 417pp. [thesis of 1973].
Robert Lee Wollf, William Cartleton, Irish Peasant Novelist: A Preface to his Fiction (NY: Garland 1980), 156pp.
John Cronin, The Anglo-Irish Novel: Vol. I: ‘Nineteenth Century’ [1980].
William Carleton, Valentine McClutchy, the Irish Agent (NY: Garland, 1979), xii, 468pp., in [?The Unappeasable Host, UCD Press 1998], pp.214-18.
Maureen Waters, (‘William Carleton: The Writer as Witness’, Études Irlandaises, 1986, p.53).
Margaret O’Brien, 'William Carleton, ‘The Lough Derg Exile’, in Irish Writing, eds., Hyland and Samells, London 1991, p.90.).
J. W. Foster, Colonial Consequences, 1991, p.40.
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction [Pt. I] (Dublin: Maunsel 1919).
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington 1904).
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day Company 1991), Vol. 1.
John Sutherland, ed., Oxford Companion to Victorian Fiction, lists Fardarougha (1839), serialised irregularly in DUM, Feb. 1837-Feb. 1838. ‘Quantity of fiction inferior in lit. quality to Lover and Lever ... but cater[ing] less obviously for the mainland English public.’ None of his novels are treated separately in Sutherland.
Frank Ormsby, ed., Northern Windows, an anthology of Ulster autobiography (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 1987), includes extract from Autobiography (here pp.1-12).
Kevin Rockett, et al., eds., Cinema & Ireland (1988) lists Willy Reilly and his Colleen Bawn (Film Co. of Ireland; dir. John MacDonagh, 1920), 23-9.
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Notes
Traits and Stories: Editions of Carleton’s Traits and Stories [... &c.] are treated as follows in Barbara Hayley’s Foreword to the 1990 Reprint: ‘These [the orig. series of 1830] were followed in 1832 by an equally acclaimed Second Series, and after several reprints and new edns., both series were put together in 1842 for the extravagant and elegant New Edition of which this is a facs. reproduction.’ (Barbara Hayley, Foreword, to Traits and Stories, 1990 Edn., p.11).
Thomas Davis on Carleton: ‘Born and bred among the people - full of their animal vehemence skilled in their sports - as credulous and headstrong in boyhood, and as fitful and varied in manhood, as the wildest - he had felt with them and must ever sympathise with them. Endowed with the highest dramatic genius, he has represented their love and generosity, their wrath and negligence, their crimes and virtues, as a hearty peasant - not a notetaking critic. (Thomas Davis, Gill & Son, 1945, p.111; cited in Gerry Smyth, Decolonisation and Criticism: The Construction of Irish Literature (London: Pluto Press 1998, p.71.)
"Wildgoose Lodge": After the execution of Paddy Devann by hanging, the perpetrator of the horror of Wildgoose Lodge, his mother remembers him as ‘my poor martyr’, while the peasantry recall him as ‘Poor Paddy!’; Carleton comments in a footnote, ‘This is a gloomy fact that speaks volumes.’ (Traits, Vol. 2 p.326).
Cleric life: Carleton wrote a memorandum of 1826 to Sir Robert Peel arguing strongly against Catholic Emancipation. Details of the "Peel Memorandum" are given in Wolff, William Carleton: Irish Peasant Novelist (NY: Garland 1980) pp.19-22, which also deals with the refusal of Bishop Murphy to support Carleton for entry to Maynooth because of his antagonistic relationship with Fr. Keenan to under whom Carleton was to study. Keenan was suspended by the bishop; but Carleton makes no mention of the matter of his lacking diocesan support in his Autobiography. (Cited in Peter Barr, UCC MA op. cit., supra].
Contra Lever?: ‘Mr Lever’s "Irish" Novels’, printed in FDA1, pp.1255-65, and therein ascribed to Charles Gavan Duffy, is called a ‘scurrilous attack’ on Lever but ascribed to Carleton in Malcolm Brown, Politics of Irish Literature, 1972, with the added note that Lever apparently took the criticism to heart and resigned from the Dublin University Magazine to write a peace offering in the form of an agrarian novel, Saint Patrick’s Eve. [See Brown, op. cit., p.65 & ftn.]
The William Carleton Summer School in Clogher Valley, Co. Tyrone, was inaugurated 11-14 Aug. 1992 in conjunction with a Community Festival on 8-15th Aug.
Redivivus: Carleton is the chief revenant in Seamus Heaney’s poem Station Island (1984), ‘O holy Jesus, does nothing change? ... hard-mouthed Ribbonmen and ‘Orange bigots / made me into the old fork-tongued turncoat.’
William Trevor quotes from Wildgoose Lodge, in A Writer’s Ireland, Landscape of Literature (Viking 1984), p.92, ‘the scene of hellish murder ... lies at Wildgoose Lodge in the Co. of Louth, four miles from Carrickmacross and nine from Dundalk. The name ... was Lynch.’ (Carleton, ‘Wildgoose Lodge’; cited in Trevor, op. cit. p.92).
William Jr.: A son, William, emigrated to Australia, while his son J. R. Carleton wrote a letter to D. J. O’Donoghue in (12 Oct. 1895) with an account of his father, then living and spoken of as ‘the well known Australian poet’, living at 34 York St, Melbourne. J. R. Carleton was a tradesman whose elaborately-designed stationery offering painting, paperhanging, house decorating, &c. from an address at 139 Toorak Road, South Yarra, with a private address at 77 Osborne St, South Yarra. (Information supplied on Bradford Diaspora E-list by correspondent Eileen O'Sullivan, Dir., Irish Educational Association, Gainesville, FL USA 32653; eolas1@juno.com.)
... the nephew: D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland: A Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of Irish Writers of English Verse (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co. 1912), also lists a William Carleton, dramatist in America who claimed to be a nephew, b. Dublin 1827; committed suicide.
Oil portrait by John Slattery (fl.1846-58), said by his widow to be ‘a most truthful one’, in the National Gallery of Ireland [incl. in Ulster Museum exhib., 1965]; pen drawing by Charles Gray of Carleton with Robt. James and William Hamilton Maxwell, presented by W. G. Strickland to NGI [see W. B. Yeats, A Centenary Exhibition (Nat. Gallery of Ireland 1965)].
Seamus Heaney, Station Island (voice of Carleton:) ‘I who learned to read in the reek of flax / and smelled hanged bodies rotting on their gibbets / and saw their booped slime gleaming from the sacks - / ard-mouthed Ribbonmen and Orange bigots / made me into the old fork-tongued turncoat / who mucked the byre of their politics.’ (Cited in Patricia Craig, ‘History and its Retrieval in Contemporary Northern Irish Poetry: Paulin, Montague and Others’, in Andrews, ed., Contemporary Irish Poetry, Macmillan 1996, p.115).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)