Life
?1835-1869; b. Limerick; The Foster-Brothers of Doon, A Tale of the
Irish Rebellion of 1798 (RTS [1890]), 394pp., issued anonymously;
also Golden Hills (1865), a reactionary tale of Famine days.
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Criticism
Margaret Kelleher, ‘Irish Famine in Literature’, in Cáthal
Portéir, ed., The Great Irish Famine [Thomas Davis Lectures
Series], RTÉ/Mercier, 1995, p.234f: comments on Golden Hills
(1865), which condemns agrarian assassinations by ‘lawless Riband
tribunal’ (p.6).
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Notes
Chris Morash, The Hungry Voice (Dublin: Gill &
Macmillan 1989), calls him a novelist of the Famine of 1845 and quotes:
‘In 1850 the horizon was clearing. The lessening agricultural population
had more elbow room ... overgrown estates, encumbered with heavy charges,
were broken into a variety of smaller properties, freed from burden, passing
from effete hands of the old possessors into the vigorous hands of men
from the middle class.’ (From Golden Hills, London: Religious
Tract Society, 1865, p.266; Morash, p.18.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)