William Carleton

This is about the Irish novelist. For other uses, see William Carleton (disambiguation).

William Carleton

William Carleton (20 February 1794, Prillisk, Clogher, Co. Tyrone - 30 January, 1869, Sandford, Co. Dublin) was an Irish novelist.

Carleton's father was a tenant farmer, who supported fourteen children on as many acres, and young Carleton passed his early life among scenes similar to those he later described in his books. His father had an extraordinary memory and a thorough acquaintance with Irish folklore; the mother was noted throughout the district for her lovely voice. The character of Honor, the miser's wife, in Fardorougha, is said to be based on her.

Carleton received a basic education. As his father moved from one small farm to another, he attended various hedge schools, which used to be a notable feature of Irish life. A picture of one of these schools occurs in the sketch called "The Hedge School" included in Traits and Stories of Irish Peasantry. Most of his learning was gained from a curate named Keenan, who taught a classical school at Donagh (Co. Monaghan), which Carleton attended from 1814 to 1816. Before this Carleton had hoped to obtain an education as a poor scholar at Munster, with a view to entering the church; but in obedience to a warning dream, the story of which is told in the Poor Scholar, he returned home, where he was admired by the neighbouring peasantry for his supposed learning. An amusing account of this period is given in the sketch, "Denis O'Shaughnessy."

Aged about nineteen, he undertook one of the religious pilgrimages then common in Ireland. His experiences as a pilgrim, narrated in "The Lough Derg Pilgrim," made him give up the thought of entering the church, and he eventually became a Protestant. His vacillating ideas as to a mode of life were determined by reading the picaresque novel Gil Blas (by Alain-René Lesage, 1668-1747). He decided to try what fortune had in store for him. He went to Killanny, Co. Louth, and for six months acted as tutor in the family of a farmer, Piers Murphy. After some other experiments he set out for Dublin, arriving with two shillings and sixpence in his pocket.

He first sought occupation as a bird-stuffer, but a proposal to use potatoes and meal as stuffing failed to recommend him. He then tried to become a soldier, but the colonel of the regiment dissuaded him—Carleton had applied in Latin. He obtained some teaching and a clerkship in a Sunday School office, began to contribute to journals, and "The Pilgrimage to Lough Derg," which was published in the Christian Examiner, attracted great attention. In 1830 appeared the first series of Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (2 vols.), which immediately placed Carleton in the first rank of Irish novelists. A second series (3 vols.), containing, among other stories, "Tubber Derg, or the Red Well," appeared in 1833, and Tales of Ireland in 1834. From that time till within a few years of his death he wrote constantly. “Fardorougha the Miser, or the Convicts of Lisnamona” appeared in 1837-1838 in the Dublin University Magazine. Among his other novels are:

• Valentine McClutchy, the Irish Agent, or Chronicles of the Castle Cumber Property (3 vols., 1845)
• The Black Prophet, a Tale of Irish Famine, in the Dublin University Magazine (1846), printed separately in the next year
• The Emigrants of Ahadarra (1847)
• Willy Reilly and his dear Cooleen Bawn (in The Independent, London, 1850)
• The Tithe Proctor (1849), the violence of which did his reputation harm among his own countrymen.^{[clarification needed]}

Some of his later stories, The Squanders of Castle Squander (1852) for instance, are spoiled by the mass of political matter in them. In spite of his considerable literary production, Carleton remained poor, but his necessities were relieved in 1848 by a pension of £200 a year granted by Lord John Russell in response to a memorial on Carleton's behalf signed by numbers of distinguished persons in Ireland. He died at Sandford, County Dublin, and is interred at Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold's Cross, Dublin.

Grave of William Carleton

Carleton wrote from intimate acquaintance with the scenes he described, and drew with a sure hand a series of pictures of peasant life, unsurpassed for their appreciation of the passionate tenderness of Irish home life, of the buoyant humour and the domestic virtues which would, under better circumstances, bring prosperity and happiness. He alienated the sympathies of many Irishmen, however, by his unsparing criticism and occasional exaggeration of the darker side of Irish character. He was in his own words the "historian of their habits and manners, their feelings, their prejudices, their superstitions and their crimes" (Preface to Tales of Ireland). A second factor that alienated him from many of his Irish countrymen was his attitude towards the Catholic religion. It has been argued (for example by Brian Donnelly^[1]) that his conversion may have been a pragmatic move, as it would have been difficult for an aspiring young Catholic author to receive the degree of patronage necessary to achieve success. In 1826 he wrote a letter to the then Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel urging him against Catholic Emancipation (Peel was already an outspoken opponent), and offering to provide proof of the involvement of Daniel O'Connell in agrarian crimes, while also vilifying the Catholic clergy and Roman Catholic schoolteachers.^[2] Shortly afterwards he befriended Caesar Orway, according to W. B. Yeats an "anti-papal controversialist" who encouraged him to write stories to "highlight...the corrupt practices of an ignorant clergy."^[2]

During the last months of his life Carleton began an autobiography which he brought down to the beginning of his literary career. This forms the first part of The Life of William Carleton ... (2 vols., 1896), by David James O'Donoghue, which contains full information about his life, and a list of his scattered writings. A selection from his stories (1889), in the "Camelot Series," has an introduction by William Butler Yeats.

Carleton is featured in the long poem Station Island by Séamus Heaney.

References and sources

Notes

Sources

• This article incorporates text from the article "William Carleton" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

• Dooley, Terence (2006). Wildgoose Lodge. Four Courts Press. ISBN 9781846821127. 

• Dillon (ed.), Charles (2000). Tyrone: History and Society. Dublin: Geographic Publications. 

External links

• Works by William Carleton at Project Gutenberg

• In 2005, a play based on several of Carleton’s short stories premiered in the United States. Tales of a Public House: An Evening of Ghosts, Murder, & Wild Imaginings was written by John Dandola.