Life
1949- [Robert Fitzroy; fam. & usu. Roy]; b. 16 Jan., Waterford, son
and second child of Church of Ireland parents Betty and Frederick Ernest
Foster (“Fef”), headmaster of Newtown School, Waterford - both
of whom taught Irish in school; gs. of farming family in Co. Cavan with
a mat. gf. in the RIC; ed. Newtown School, Waterford; won took up Ford
Scholarship to St Andrew’s School, Middletown, Delaware; TCD Foundation
Scholar, 1969, studied under T. W. Moody; grad. BA Hons 1971; successfully
completed PhD on Charles Stewart Parnell and his family, 1975; lect. Birbeck
College, University of London, 1974-91, and later Chair of Modern British
History; taught briefly at Princeton before appointment as first Carroll
Professor of Irish History, 1991, seated at John’s College, Oxford;
served as reviews editor on History and frequent
reviewer of TLS; books incl. Charles Stewart Parnell, the Man
and His Family (1976); appt. Reader, 1983; Lord Randolph Churchill:
A Political Life (1981); Political Novels and 19th Century History
(1982); Modern Ireland 1600-1972 (1988), urging at the conclusion
a ‘more relaxed and inclusive definition of Irishnesses’; also
ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Ireland (1989); Paddy
& Mr Punch (1993); took on authorised biography of W. B. Yeats
on death of F. S. L. Lyons (d.1983), who had assumed it after Denis Donoghue's
withdrawal; m. Aisling [Foster], 1972; issued
Vol. I., The Apprentice Mage, 1865-1914 (OUP 1997), extracts
serialised in The Irish Times, March 1997; winner of the Prix de
Rome; issued The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland
(2001); issued W. B. Yeats: the Arch-Poet (2003); gave the Wiles Lectures (QUB), May 2004. DIW OCIL
DIL2 FDA
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Works
History & Biography, Charles Stewart Parnell: The
Man and His Family (Sussex: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1976; NJ: Humanities
Press 1979); ‘To The Northern Counties Station: Lord Randolph Churchill
and the Prelude to the Orange Card’, in F. S. L. Lyons & R. A.
J. Hawkins, ed., Ireland Under the Union: Varieties of Tension: Essays
in Honour of T. W. Moody (Oxford Clarendon Press 1980); Lord Randolph
Churchill: A Political Life (Oxford: OUP 1981), 448pp.; Modern
Ireland 1600-1972 (London: Allen Lane; NY Viking/Penguin 1988),
688pp. [with introductory essay on ‘Varieties of Irishness’,
pp.3-14]; ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Ireland
(OUP 1989 [with appendix on ‘Literature’ by Declan Kiberd],
and Do. [rev. edn. as] The Oxford History of Ireland (OUP 1992),
346pp.; W. B. Yeats, A Life, Vol. I: The Apprentice Mage,
1865-1914 (OUP March 1997), xxxi, 640pp. [32pp. pls.]; The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland (London: Allen
Lane/Penguin Press 2001), 282pp.; W. B. Yeats - A Life,
II: The Arch-Poet 1915-1939 (Oxford: OUP 2003), 798pp. [with index].
Essay collections, Paddy and Mr Punch: Connections in Irish History and English History (London: Allen Lane/Penguin 1993; rep. 1995) [incl. Protestant Magic, Chap. 11, pp.212-32;The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland (London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press 2001), xx, 281pp.[0713994975].
Miscellaneous, Political Novels and Nineteenth-Century History (Winchester: King Alfred’s College 1982) [chk]; ed., Hubert Butler, The Sub-Prefect Should Have Held His Tongue (Dublin: Lilliput Press 1990; rep. London: Penguin 1992), 368pp., and Do., in French trans. as L’Envahisseur est venu en pantoufles (1995); The Story of Ireland: an Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Oxford on 1 Dec. 1994 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995), 31pp.; Roy Foster, interview with Eileen Battersby (Irish Times, Weekend, 3 March 1997); Roy Foster, ‘A New Woman among the Nationalists’, review of Samuel Levenson, Maud Gonne: A Biography of Yeats’s Beloved (London: Cassell 1976), 436pp., in Times Literary Supplement, 30.10.1977; Roy Foster, Review of Robert Tracy, The Unappeasable Host (1998), in Times Literary Supplement.
Contributions, ‘Varieties of Irishness’ [Cultural Traditions Group inaugural lecture], in Maurna Crozier, ed., Varieties of Irishness (QUB 1989); ‘History and the Irish Question’, in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society [5th Ser.], 33 (1983), rep. in Ciaran Brady, ed., Interpreting Irish History: The Debate on Historical Revisionism 1938-1994 (Dublin: IAP 1994), pp.121-45; ‘The Magic of Its Lovely Dawn, Reading Irish History as Story’ [Carroll Inaugural Lecture], printed in TLS (16 Dec. 1993), pp.4-6, and Do. [as pamphl.], The Story of Ireland: an Inaugural Lecture delivered before the University of Oxford on 1 Dec. 1994, by R. F. Foster, Carroll Professor of History (Clarendon Press 1995), 31pp.
Journalism, reviews incl. ‘By mask and by magic’, review of Frank Tuohy, Yeats (Macmillan 1976), in TLS (29 Oct. 1976); ‘More Maudit Than Most’ [review of Brian Moore, The Mangan Inheritance], in Times Literary Supplement (23 November 1979); Roy Foster, ‘Moral Dilemmas and the Sins of Omission’, in Sunday Times [during 1990], H7. See also ‘In Ireland’s Green and Pleasant Land’, Roy Foster on the streaks of nostalgia that mark the never-never land described in the stories of Gerry Adams (Independent, UK, 10 Sept. 1994.)
Paddy and Mr Punch: Connections in Irish History and English History (London: Allen Lane/Penguin 1993), CONTENTS: Acknowledgements [ix]; Introduction [xi]; History and the Irish Question [1]; Varieties of Irishness: Cultures and Anarchy in Ireland [21]; Interpretations of Parnell: The Importance of Locale [40]; Parnell and His People: The Ascendancy and Home Rule [62]; Knowing Your Place: Words and Boundaries in Anglo-Irish Relations [78]; The Irishness of Elizabeth Bowen [102]; Love, Politics and Textual Corruption: Mrs O’Shea’s Parnell [123]; ‘Fatal Drollery’: Parliamentary Novels, Outsiders and Victorian Political History [139]; Paddy and Mr Punch [171]; Good Behaviour: Yeats, Synge and Anglo-Irish Etiquette [195]; Protestant Magic: W.B. Yeats and the Spell of Irish History [212]; To the Northern Counties Station: Lord Randolph Churchill and the Orange Card [233]; Thinking from Hand to Mouth: Anglo-Irish Literature, Gaelic Nationalism and Irish Politics in the I890s [262]; Marginal Men and Micks on the Make: The Uses of Irish Exile, c.1840-1922 [281]. Notes 306. Index 373.
The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland (London: Penguin 2001, 2002), 282pp. CONTENTS: Acknowledgements ix; Introduction xi. 1] The Story of Ireland [1]; 2: Theme-parks and Histories [23]; 3: “Colliding Cultures”: Leland Lyons and the Reinterpretation of Irish History [37]; 4: Yeats at War: Poetic Strategies and Political Reconstruction [58]; 5: “When the Newspapers Have Forgotten Me”: Yeats, Obituarists and Irishness [80]; 6: The Normal and the National: Yeats and the Boundaries of Irish Writing [95]; 7: Square-built Power and Fiery Shorthand: Yeats, Carleton and the Irish Nineteenth Century [113]; 8: Stopping the Hunt: Trollope and the Memory of Ireland [l27]; 9: Prints on the Scene: Elizabeth Bowen and the Landscape of Childhood [148]; 10: Selling Irish Childhoods: Frank McCourt and Gerry Adams [164]; 11: The Salamander and the Slap: Hubert Butler and His Century [187]; 12: Remembering 1798 [211]; Notes 235; Index 267.
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Criticism
Conor Cruise O’Brien, ‘The Idea of a post-Catholic Ireland,
review of Paddy and Mr Punch, in Times Literary Supplement
(16 Dec. 1993).
John Kelly, Review of The Apprentice Mage (1997), inIrish Times (8.ic.1997).
Katie O’Donovan, ‘Putting Father into History’, interview with Yeats’s children Ann and Michael, in Irish Times (26 March 1997).
Seamus Deane, ‘Magus of the Mask’, Guardian Weekly [orig. Guardian] (30 March 1997).
Mick Imlah, ‘A Genius, A Fool’, in Times Literary Supplement (11 April 1997).
John Carey, feature review-article, in Sunday Times, ‘Books’ (9 March 1997).
Terry Eagleton,’ ‘Song at Twlight’ [Terry Eagleton treads softly on an Irish bard’s dreams’], in The Independent (UK), ‘Long Weekend, front page feature] (8 March 1997).
Aubane Versus Oxford: A Response to Professor Roy Foster and Bernard O’Donoghue (Aubne Hist. Soc. 2002), 40pp..
Andrew Brown, ‘Interpreter of myths’ [interview-article on Roy Foster], in The Guardian (13 Sept. 2003).
Terry Eagleton, ‘A Postmodernist
Punch’, Irish Studies Review, No. 6, pp.2-3. See also “Eagleton Rebuffed”, in Irish Studies Review,
No.7, being answers by Bruce Stewart (pp.31-35) and Austen Morgan (pp.36-38).
Seamus Deane ‘Wherever Green is Read’, in Revising the Rising, eds. Máirín Ní Donnchadha & Theo Dorgan (1991), p,102.
Thomas Hofheinz, Joyce and the Invention of Irish History (Cambridge UP 1995), pp. 62-63.
P. J. Kavanagh, ‘O all the instruments agree’, review of Apprentice Mage, in Spectator (15 March 1997).
Luke Gibbons, ‘“Some Hysterical Hatred”: History, Hysteria and the Literary Revival’, Irish University Review (Spring/Summer 1997), pp.7-23.
Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland (1995), p.643.
Colm Tóibín, ‘New Ways to Kill Your Father: Historical Revisionism’, in Karl-Heinz Westarp and Michael Böss, eds., Ireland: Towards New Identities? (Aarhus UP 1998), pp.28-36.
Terry Eagleton, review of R. F. Foster, The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making it Up in Ireland (Penguin 2001), in Guardian Weekly (8-14 Nov. 2001), p.15.
Fintan O’Toole, reviewing of The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making it Up in Ireland (Allen Lane), 282pp., in The Irish Times [Weekend], 10 Nov. 2001, p.8.
Christopher Shea, ‘An Irish historian exposes his country’s mythmaking from the Great Potato Famine to Angela’s Ashes’, interview-article, in Boston Globe, E1 (15 Sept. 2002).
Adrian Frazier, ‘On Automatic’, review of W. B. Yeats - A Life, Vol. 2: “The Arch-Poet”, in NY Times Book Review (9 Nov. 2003), p.9.
Frank Kermode, review
of W. B. Yeats - A Life: Vol. 2: “The Arch-Poet”,
in Los Angeles Times (23 Nov. 2003).
Denis Donoghue, ‘What Was Lost: Can a biography of W. B. Yeats rely on historical facts alone?’, in Harper’s Magazine (Dec. 2003), pp.95-102.
Terry Eagleton, ‘Mystic Poet”, review of W. B. Yeats - A Life: Vol. 2: “The Arch-Poet”, in The Nation, 277, 19 (2003).
Barry Ó Séaghdha, ‘Shell-shocked Culture’, in Magill (June 2003), pp.46-47.
Valerie Grove, ‘Writing Poetry into Ireland’s History’, The Times (21.3.1997).
Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature [rev. 2 vol. edn.] (1996), pp.456-57.
Emer Nolan, James Joyce
and Irish Nationalism, London: Routledge 1995, p.20.
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Notes
Seamus Heaney diplomatically quotes and endorses Foster’s
proposition that ‘we need not give up on our own claims on Irishness
in order to conceive of it as a flexible definition’, in ‘Frontiers
of Writing’, Oxford Poetry Lecture; reprinted in Bullán,
Spring 1994, pp.7-15. p.14.
Foster is called the author of a standard work on Bridge in R. B. McDowell, Land & Learning: Two Irish Clubs (Dublin: Lilliput 1993); see review by T. C. Barnard, in Bullán, 1, 1 (Spring 1994), p.138.
Roy Foster selects Anne Enright, The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (Cape); Eric Hobsaum, Interesting Times: A twentieth-century Life (Allen Lane), and Tom Paulin, The Invasion Handbook (Faber), in ‘Books of the Year’ [column], Times Literary Supplement (6 Dec. 2002).
The Wiles Lectures at School of History, Queen’s University Belfast (May 2004), given by Roy Foster FBA, Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford, speaking on “Metamorphoses: The Strange Death of Romantic Ireland, c.1972-2000” (5.00 p.m., 18-21 May 2004/Room G07, Peter Froggatt Centre, Queen’s University Belfast). Individual titles: “Political Metamorphosis: How the Gombeenmen became Playboys” (18 May); “Economic Metamorphosis: How the Minuses became Plusses” (19 May); “Religious Metamorphosis: How the Catholics became Protestants” (20 May); “Cultural Metamorphosis: How the Men became Women” (21 May). The series, founded by a benefaction of Mrs Janet Boyd, Co. Down, are designed for audiences from the general public as well as academics.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)