Classic Irish Novels

ISBN-13:978 0 86281 919 4

Author: George Moore

123 x 224 mm / 266pp/
Paperback £7.50, €10.95

A Drama in Muslin - A Classic Irish Novel

A work of quite remarkable range, George Moore's first Irish novel is at once a deeply felt response to the tragic situation of the women of Anglo-Ireland and an exposure of an entire society and the system which underpins it. The 'muslin martyrs' of the novel are the numerous unmarried daughters of the Anglo-Irish gentry, and Moore, with a characteristic blend of sympathetic insight and almost feline delight, depicts these women at their husband-hunting activities, both in the rural Big House settings and during the festive events of the Dublin "season" to which the debutantes flocked.

Rich in language, A Drama in Muslin constantly delights with its satirical effects and vivid period detail. Moore excelled at large set-piece scenes and so we encounter stately Dublin drawing- rooms and a lively 'Spinsters' Ball' at Ballinasloe. His perfect depiction of the last days of life in the 'Big House' and the new order is encapsulated in his heroine's story of escape from privileged but stifling Ascendancy Ireland to life as a doctor's wife in London.

Fardorougha the Miser - Classic Irish Novel

ISBN-13: 978 1 84758 022 1

Author: Willam Carleton

140 x 215 mm / 240 pp/

Paperback £7.50, €10.95

Fardorougha the Miser - A Classic Irish Novel

Fardorougha the Miser was published in 1839 to critical acclaim in Ireland; since then this novel has continued to absorb reader with its terrible tale of obsession and greed. Fardorougha Donovan and his wife, Honor, have been married all of thirteen years and are childless. Honor continues to pray that she will bear a child, while her husband abandons such hopes, giving himself over the accumulation of wealth through usury and other exactions inflicted upon poorer neighbours. The unexpected birth of a boy, Connor, fills Honor with incredulous joy. In Fardorougha it produced mixed feelings; his natural, paternal delight is tainted with fear for the future, since by now he is far gone in miserliness. As events, unfold, Fardorougha’s dreadful greed destroys his natural affections and sets in motion a dangerous course of revenge.

Offering a compelling analysis of a tormented individual and his ruinous obsession, William Carleton reveals the chaotic Ireland of pre-Famine days, an Ireland ill-governed and prey to the lawless terror of such anarchic gangs as the Whiteboys.

ISBN-13:978 0 86281 931 6

Author: Emily Lawless

140 x 215 mm / 266pp/

Paperback £7.50, €10.95

Hurrish - A Classic Irish Novel

The unusual title of this compelling novel is derived from its hero, Horatio O'Brien, who is familiarly known to his family and friends as "Hurrish". Hurrish is a gentle giant of a man who farms a smallholding in the Burren district of Co. Clare. Emily Lawless, offers a violent tale of local rivalries about land, resulting in brutal confrontations and, finally, murder.

The protagonists of this setting are seen as victims of a disorderly society and which mistrust of the law leads inevitably to brutality and chaos. The author's own antagonism to the Land League, set up to better the lot of impoverished smallholders, is clear, yet she does not exonerate the colonial authority from blame either.

ISBN-13: 978 1 84758 023 8

Author: Charles Lever

140 x 215 mm / 444 pp/

Paperback £7.50, €10.95

Lord Kilgobbin - A Classic Irish Novel

A work of unusual and complex range, Lord Kilgobbin was Lever’s last novel and was published in the year of his death, 1872. With its settings panning the Irish midlands to imperial London and Turkey to Greece, the book’s heroine emerges as the daughter of an Irish gentlewoman and a Delos prince.

When the novel first appeared the abortive Fenian Rising of 1867 was still press in the public mind, and Lever spins a gripping tale of Irish politics in a context of imperial negotiations. His own experience as a diplomat gave him valuable insights into the world of international wheeling and dealing. Surprisingly, there is in the novel a strong undertow of cynical disenchantment with British power in Ireland, and, most shocking of all in a book by an avowed Anglo-Irish High Tory, it is the Fenian head-centre who gets the girl in the end!

ISBN-13: 978 1 84758 025 2

Author: Maria Edgeworth

140 x 215 mm / 256 pp/

Paperback £7.50, €10.95

Ormond - A Classic Irish Novel

Ormond, the last of Maria Edgeworth’s four brilliantly comic Irish novels, was published in 1817, the year of her beloved father’s death. In Harry Ormond, Edgeworth offers a hero in search of his Anglo-Irish identity, an identity that must struggle against the social mores of the day. He is provided with various possible allegiances. Sir Ulick O’Shane of Castle Hermitage is a hard-drinking calculating unionist politician. Directly contrasted with him is one of Edgeworth’s most celebrated characters, King Corny of the Black Islands, an independently eccentric lord of a realm where lawless freedom prevails.

In the end, Harry conforms neither to Sir Ulick’s nor King Corny’s ideals. Instead, he marries Florence Annaly, daughter of Sir Hubert Annaly, an idealised version of Maria Edgeworth’s father, who represents English fair-mindedness and decency. Harry inherits King Corny’s position as ruler and in him Anglo-Irish, Gaelic and English elements are harmoniously reconciled. Edgeworth’s lively plot takes readers on a memorable nineteenth-century journey.

ISBN-13: 978 1 84758 024 5

Author: John Banim

140 x 215 mm / 280 pp

Paperback £7.50, €10.95

The Nowlans - A Classic Irish Novel

The Nowlans is for its period, surprisingly frank in its treatment of sexual frustrations and the strains of clerical celibacy. In John Nowlan, Banim charts with great boldness and considerable psychological insights violent, sensual impulse, such as those which torment Hardy’s Jude Fawley or Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus. Through the harrowing personal struggles of ‘priest John’, Banim illuminates the sectarian tensions of the Ireland of his day – an Ireland which saw the proselytising activities of the ‘New Reformation’ in full swing, an Ireland where all that was solid and respectable was also Protestant and where the vast majority of the people were Catholics, struggling desperately to achieve some sort of civic identity for the first time since the inception of the penal laws.

A compelling work, The Nowlans veers between tragic realism and heady melodrama. Torn between his love for Letty Adams and clerical vocation, John Nowlan is one of the most memorable characters to be found in early nineteenth-century Irish fiction

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