Life
1923-1983 [Francis Steward Leland; called Leland]; b. Derry; ed. Tunbridge
Wells, and TCD; published doctoral work as The Irish Parliamentry Party
1890-1910 (1951); TCD Fellow, 1951-64; The Fall of Parnell 1890-91
(1960); book-length study of Parnell (1965); Professor of Modern History
at Univ. of Kent, 1964; life of John Dillon (1968); Master of Eliot College,
1969; published Ireland Since the Famine (1971), the standard work;
Provost of Trinity, 1974-81; major biographical study Charles Stewart
Parnell (1977), winner of Heinemann Prize, 1978; issued 1978 Ford
Lectures at Oxford as Culture and Anarchy in Ireland 1890-1939
(1979), winner of Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize, arguing that ‘the essence
of the Irish situation is the collision of a variety of cultures, Gaelic,
English, Anglo-Irish and Ulster Protestant’; died suddenly of heart-attack,
leaving in its incipient stages an authorised biography of Yeats which
R. F. Foster then took on. DIB DIW DIL OCEL DUB OCIL
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Works
The Irish Parliamentry Party 1890-1910 (1951); The Fall of Parnell
1890-91 (1960); Parnell (Dundalk 1965); John Dillon, A Biography
(1968); Ireland Since the Famine (London: Fontana 1971; Bungay:
Collins 1973); Charles Stewart Parnell (1977); Culture and Anarchy
in Ireland 1890-1939 (Oxford 1979), 192pp.; ed., with R. Hawkins,
Ireland under the Union, Varieties of Tension (Oxford 1979).
Articles incl. ‘The Political Ideas of Parnell’, Historical Journal, Vol. 16, no. 4 (1973), pp.749-75; ‘A Question of Identity: A Protestant View’, Irish Times, 9 Jan. 1975; ‘A Question of Identity: A Protestant View’ [News Feature], Irish Times, 9 Jan. 1975; Lyons and Prof. John A. Murphy share a full page of during the ‘Truce’ in 1975 under the headings ‘A Protestant View/A Catholic View’; abridged from RTE TV talk shortly before [Cuttings; also Julian Moynihan, Anglo-Irish, Princeton UP 1995).
Criticism
See Oliver MacDonagh, ‘The Pursuit of Hibernicity’, in Times
Literary Supplement (28 March 1980) [long review of Lyons, Culture
and Anarchy (OUP 1979).
Seamus Deane, Heroic Styles: The Tradition of an Idea [Field Day Pamphlet, No. 4] (Derry: Field Day Co. 1984).
Declan Kiberd, Anglo-Irish Attitudes [Field Day Pamphlets, No. 6] (Derry: Field Day 1984).
W. J. McCormack, The Battle of the Books (Dublin: Lilliput 1986), p.42.
Luke Gibbons, Transformations in Irish Culture (Field Day/Cork UP 1996), pp. 17-18.
Gerry Smyth, Decolonisation and Criticism: The Construction of Irish Literature (London: Pluto Press 1998), p.37.
Conor McCarthy, Irish Modernisation: Crisis and Culture in Ireland, 1969-1992, Dublin: Four Courts Press 2000, p.90.
Ronan Fanning, ‘The Great Enchantment’, in Ciaran Brady, ed., Interpreting Irish History: The Debate on Historical Revisionism, IAP, 1994, p.159.
R. F. Foster, ‘Varieties of Irishness’, in Paddy and Mr Punch, 1993 [Chap. 2], p.22.
Roy Foster, ‘Varieties of Irishness’, in Maurna Crozier, ed., Cultural Traditions in Northern Ireland: Varieties of Irishness, proceedings of the Cultural Traditions Cultural Traditions Group Conference, Belfast: IIS 1989, p.19.
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Notes
Titular count: ‘The Battle of Two Civilisations’, a chapter-title
in Ireland Since the Famine [viz., Chap. 5], originates with D.
P. Moran’s chapter in The Philosophy of Irish Ireland, and
is further modifed in as ‘The Battle of Three Civilisations’,
in George D. Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland, pp.228-58. Note also
that the title Ireland Since the Famine had already been used by
W. F. Bailey in 1902.
Plato’s Cave: Of war-time Irish neutrality (1939-45), Lyons writes that the country was retiring into ‘Plato’s Cave’ (Ireland since the Famine, 557-58; quoted in Bernard Adams, Denis Johnston: A Life, Lilliput 2002, p.214.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)