Life
1852-1913 [Canon Sheehan], b. Mallow, 27 March, son of shopkeeper; initially
planned a career in the professions; suffered death of two sisters; entrusted
to care of a priest relative on death of parents; ed. Fermoy and Maynooth;
experienced nervous breakdown in face of responsibilities of priesthood;
passed a year in convalescence before ordination; curate at Queenstown,
1881-89; friend of Fr. Keller who led agitation on Ponsonby estate during
‘Plan of Campaign’; appt. parish priest, Doneraile, 1894; canon
of Cloyne, 1905 [var 1906 John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to
Victorian Fiction, (Harlow: Longmans 1988)]; wrote exclusively for
Catholic audience in the belief that the faith was endangered by modernisation
and socialism; he negotiated land-treaties in Doneraile in 1903-07; supported
William O’Brien’s All-Ireland League; Geoffrey Austin, Student
(1895) and The Triumph of Failure (1899), both ‘sermons
in print’ on the importance of Catholic teaching in higher education;
greeted by Irish critics as a major religious novel and a ‘trumpet
call to our people’; issued My New Curate (1900), centred
on Fr. Letheby, a reforming priest, somewhat based on Fr. T. O’Callaghan,
a Land-leaguer who acted as his own curate; originally serialised in The
American Ecclesiastical Review; issued Luke Delmege (1901),
tracing the moral decline of a free-thinker who emulates English standards;
contrib. editorials to William O’Brien’s Cork Free Press,
1903; formed constructive friendship with the aristocratic nationalist
Lord Castletown of Doneraile, 1903; issued Glenanaar (1905), based
on Doneraile conspiracy trial of 1829 in which Daniel O’Connell played
a legal part; issued Lisheen (1907), in which Bob Maxwell learns
the philanthropy proper to a landlord after incognito visits to his own
tenants; The Blindness of Dr. Gray (1909), in which an old priest
learns love from the niece whom he condemns; The Queen’s Fillet
(1911), set in revolutionary France; Miriam Lucas (1912), in
which the heroine is driven from her inheritance, works with socialists
in Dublin and nurses her dying mother - a victim of sectarianism - in
New York, before resuming her rightly property; The Graves of Kilmorna
(1915), in which Halpin and Myles Cogan, the schoolteacher and the
miller’s son, prepare fatalistically for armed rebellion in the hope
that their deaths will dampen the people’s enthusiasm for their manipulative
parliamentary leaders; a commemorative statue stands outside the Catholic
church in Doneraile, complete with wire spectacles. PI JMC DIB DIW
DIL SUTH OCIL
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Works
Novels, Geoffrey Austin, Student (Dublin: M. H. Gill [1895];
1902; 5th edn. 1908); The Triumph of Failure (London: Burnes &
Oates 1899; 4th edn. 1903); My New Curate (Boston: Marlier, 1900;
1914), and Do. [facs. edn.] (Cork: Mercier Press 1989), 340pp.;
Luke Delmege (London: Longmans, Green 1901; 1915), and Do.,
new edn. (NY 1955); Glenanaar (London: Longmans, Green 1905; 1915);
Lost Angel of a Ruined Paradise (London: Longmans, Green 1904; 1915);
Lisheen, or The Test of the Spirits (London: Longmans, Green 1907;
1914); The Blindness of Dr. Gray, or The Final Law (London: Longmans,
Green 1909; 1914); The Queen’s Fillet (London: Longmans, Green
1911); Miriam Lucas (London: Longmans, Green 1912; 1914); The
Graves of Kilmorna (London: Longmans, Green 1915); Tristram Lloyd,
completed by Rev. Henry Gaffney (Dublin: Talbot 1929).
Short Fiction, A Spoiled Priest and Other Stories (London: Burnes and Oates 1905) [var. Unwin 1904]; Canon Sheehan’s Short Stories (London: Burns & Oates 1908). Poetry, Cithara Mea (Boston: Marlier, Callanan 1900); Poems (Dublin: Maunsel & Roberts 1921).
Prose, Under the Cedars and Stars (Browne & Nolan 1903); Early Essays and Lectures (London: Longmans, Green 1906); Parerga (London: Longmans, Green 1908); The Intellectuals: An Experiment in Irish Club Life (London: Longmans, Green 1911); M. J. Phelan, ed., Sermons of Canon Sheehan (Dublin: Maunsel 1920); The Literary Life and Other Essays (Dublin: Maunsel & Roberts 1921).
Miscellaneous, ‘Religious Instruction in Intermediate Schools’, in Irish Ecclesiastical Record (Sept. 1881) [pp.528-31]; ‘Introduction’, Lizzie Twigg, Songs and Poems (Dublin: Sealy Byrers & Walker 1902; London: Longmans 1905 [2nd edn.]); contrib. to Hermes: An Illustrated University Literary Quarterly (No. 1, 1907).
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Criticism
George Moore, ‘Fr. Sheehan’s last masterpiece
advocates all Ireland becoming one great monastery Hail and farewell!
Salve (London: [q.pub.] 1912), p.121.
Herman J. Heuser, DD, Canon Sheehan of Doneraile (NY: Longmans 1917).
Arthur Coussens, P. A. Sheehan, zijn leven en zijn werken (Brugge 1923).
Francis Boyle, Canon Sheehan, A Sketch of his Life and Works (Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son 1927), viii, 95pp.
W. P. Stockley, ‘Canon Sheehan and his People’, in Essays in Irish Biography (Cork 1933).
Sean O’Faolain, The Irish (West Drayton: Penguin 1947), p.97.
Benedict Kiely, ‘Canon Sheehan: The Reluctant Novelist’, Irish Writing, 37 (Autumn 1957), pp.35-45 [rep. in A Raid into Dark Corners, 1999].
Francis MacManus, ‘The Fate of Canon Sheehan’, The Bell, 15 (Nov 1947), pp.16-17.
M. P. Linehan, Canon Sheehan of Doneraile: Priest, Novelist, Man of Letters (1952).
David H. Hurton, ed., The Letters of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and Canon Sheehan (1976).
Ruth Fleischmann, 'Twentieth Century Novels of Rural Ireland' (Ph.D. Diss., UCC 1982).
Terence Brown, ‘Canon Sheehan and the Catholic Intellectual’, in Robert Welch and Suheil Badi Bushrui, eds., Literature and the Art of Creation (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1985), pp.7-18; Do., rep. in Brown, Ireland’s Literature: Selected Essays (Mullingar: Lilliput 1988) [q.p.].
D. M. Collie, ‘Nineteenth-Century Novel, A Postscript: The Case for Canon Sheehan’, in Linenhall Review (Winter 1993) [q.p.].
John Cronin, ‘Canon Sheehan, Luke Delege’, in The Anglo-Irish Novel: 1900-1940 [Vol II] (Belfast: Appletree 1990), pp.22-29.
Brendan Clifford, Canon Sheehan: A Turbulent Priest (Millstreet, Co. Cork: Aubane Historical Society 1990).
Catherine Candy, ‘Popular Irish Literature in the Age of the Anglo-Irish revival: Four Historical Case Studies’ [MA Maynooth NUI 1987).
Catherine Candy, ‘Canon Sheehan: The Conflicts of the Priest-Author’, in R. V. Comerford, M. Cullen, J. R. Hill, and C. Lennon, eds., Religion, Conflict and Coexistence in Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1990), cp.252.
Catherine Candy, Priestly Fictions: Popular Irish Novelists of the Early 20th Century (Dublin: Wolfhound 1995) [studies of Fr. Guinan, Canon Sheehan and Gerald O’Donovan].
James H. Murphy, ‘Guinan and Sheehan: “False Standard of Modern Progress”’, Catholic Fiction and Social Reality in Ireland, 1873-1922 (Conn: Greenwood Press 1997), pp.115-26, espec. 119-22.
Patrick Maume, ‘In the Fenians’ Wake: Ireland’s Nineteenth-Century Crises and Their Representation in the Sentimental Rhetoric of William O’Brien MP and Canon Sheehan’, Bullán, An Irish Studies Journal, 4, 1 (Autumn 1998), pp.59-80.
Benedict Kiely, ‘Canon Sheehan: The Reluctant Novelist’, A Raid into Dark Corners and Other Essays (Cork UP 1999), pp.181-90.
Michael Barry, By Pen and Pulpit: The Life and Times of the Author Canon Sheehan (Fermoy: Saturn Books 1990), 140pp., ill : ports.
Sean O’Faolain, The Irish, 1947, p.97.
Luke Gibbons, ‘Synge, Country and Western: The Myth of the West in Irish and American Culture’, in Transformations in Irish Culture (Field Day/Cork UP 1996), pp.23-35; p.29.)
Ruth Fleischmann, ‘Knowledge of the World as the Forbidden Fruit: Canon Sheehan and Joyce on the Sacrificium Intellectus’, pp.127-37; in Donald E. Morse, et al., eds,. A Small Nation’s Contribution to the World, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993, p.135.)
Pádraig Ó Maidín, ‘Pages from an Irishman's Diary: This Period Then', Éire-Ireland, 6, 1, Spring 1971, pp.27-34.)
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Notes
Stephen Brown, ed., Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel
1919), lists Geoffrey Austin, Student (Dublin: Gill 1895; 5th edn.1908);
The Triumph of Failure (Burnes & Oates [1899]); My New Curate
[1899] (Boston 1914), Do. another edn. (Cork: Mercier 1989);
Luke Delmege ([1901] new ed., Longmans 1915); Glenanaar [1905]
(London: Longmans 1915); Lost Angel of a Ruined Paradise [1904]
(London: Longmans 1915); The Spoiled Priest and Other Stories (London:
Gill, Burnes & Oates 1905); Lisheen, or The Test of the Spirits
([1907] new ed. London: Longmans 1914); The Blindness of Dr. Gray,
or The Final Law [1909] (London: Longmans 1914); Miriam Lucas [1912],
new ed. Longmans 1914); The Graves of Kilmorna (London:
Longmans 1915). DIL corrects bibliographical details and adds My New
Curate (Boston 1900); Under the Cedars and Stars (Browne &
Nolan 1903), essays; A Spoiled Priest and Other Stories (Unwin
1905); Early Essays and Lectures (London: Longmans 1906); Parerga
(London: Longmans 1908); Sermons, ed. M. J. Phelan (Dublin: Maunsel
1920); The Literary Life and Other Essays (Maunsel & Roberts
1921); Poems (Maunsel & Roberts 1921); Tristram Lloyd,
completed by Rev. Henry Gaffney (Talbot 1929);The Literary Life and
Other Essays (Dublin 1921).
D. J. O'Donoghue, The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical Dictionary, (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co 1912); lists poems, Cithara Mea, poems (Boston 1900), and poems in Irish Monthly; his brother D. B. Sheehan, bank clerk in Cork, wrote for The Nation and United Ireland in the 1880s.
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature, ed. (Washington: University of America 1904); gives extract from Luke Delmege.
Belfast Public Library holds var. edns. of Blindness of Dr. Gray ([?]1970); Glenanaar, a story of Irish Life (1930); Graves of Kilmorna (1930); The Intellectuals, an Experiment in Irish Club-life (1911); Lisheen (1930); Literary Life Essays, poems (1930); Lost Angel of a Ruined Paradise (1904); Luke Delmege (1930); My New Curate (1930); Poems (1921); [The] Queen’s Fillet (1930); A Spoiled Priest (1930); Tristram Lloyd (1930); Under the Cedars and the Stars (1905).
Glenanaar (1905) is based on ‘Doneraile Conspiracy’ in which
Daniel O’Connell saved four prisoners condemned to death and some
17 others who were tried as a result of determined efforts by the local
ascendancy to stamp out agrarian crime, following an attack led by George
Bond Low on one Dr Norcott, a landlord; William Burke, before his trial,
rode to Derrynane and convinced O’Connell to affair for the defendants;
the barrister confounded the perjurers in court before Judges Torrens
and Pennefather, and while the Attorney General John Doherty was summing
up; remainder of defendants acquitted and those condemned, commuted to
transportation. (Dictionary of Irish History, ed. Hickey and Doherty,
1979).
R. J. Ray, The Casting-Out of Martin Whelan (1910) is based on Glenanaar (1905), and trans. in German as Das Christtagskind.
W. P. Ryan, The Irish Literary Revival (1894), contains an erroneous reference in which Rev Canon Sheehan, vicar of SS Peter and Paul Church, in the city of Cork, is said to have been elevated to the episcopacy as Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, but also to have founded the Waterford and South-Eastern Counties Archaeol. Society with an address at the Waterford City Hall, 24th Jan 1894 [159f.].
Padraig A. Daly wrote “Summers in Doneraile”, a poem on Canon Sheehan (noticed in Dictionary of Irish Literature, ed. Robert Hogan, 1979).
G. Edward White, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self (OUP ?1993), contains information: during visits to the Castletowns in Doneraile, he [Holmes] formed an improbable friendship with Canon Sheehan, parish priest, with whom he frequently corresponded in subsequent years (See The Irish Times, 26 April 1994.)
David Alvey, writing on Thomas Davis as ‘the key to peace’ in writes in The Irish Times (10 Aug. 1995), instances Canon Sheehan as the most interesting case of those who understood his legacy: ‘In 1910, he helped to establish a political movement called the All Ireland League, a movement which opposed the advance of sectarianism in the Home Rule Party and worked to establish links with Ulster Protestantism. /.../ The league, which at its height captured eight parliamentary seats and produced a daily newspaper, and which ultimately became swallowed up in the convulsions of the Great War and the 1916 Rising, show what a nationalist movement wholly based on Davis’s vision would be like.’ (p.12.)
What’s in a title? Tthe title of Sheehan’s novel Triumph of Failure (1899) was adopted by Ruth Dudley Edwards for her biography of Patrick Pearse.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)