Synopses & Reviews
The late 19th and early 20th century was a key period of cultural transition in Ireland. Fiction was used in a plainly partisan or polemical fashion to advance changes in Irish society. Murphy explores the outlook of certain important social classes during this time frame through an assessment of Irish Catholic fiction. This highly original study provides a new context for understanding the works of canonical authors such as Joyce and George Moore by discussing them in light of the now almost forgotten writing from which they emerged--the several hundred novels that were written during the period, many of them by women writers.
Review
The study of modern Irish literature written in English has long emphasized its Anglo-Irish and Protestant traditions, James Joyce's critique of Catholicism only further solidifying the notion that Irish artists mostly sought distance from the Church of Rome. Murphy provides a useful reminder of the large number of writers in the late-19th and early-20th centuries whose fiction advanced and advocated the social experience of Irish Catholics...[H]is introduction to and tabulation of these works highlights a badly neglected area in Irish studies.Choice
Review
[A]n extremely useful if brief and tantalizing view of the cultural foothills where the Irish majority dwelt....In this short, sharp and very expensive study, Murphy has re-opened a forgotten English-speaking Catholic subculture. His novelists played a significant role in the lives of many Catholics scattered across the world, not least across the Irish Sea.The Heythrop Journal: A Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology
Review
It is hard to see how modern Irish fiction can be studied in the future without reflecting the knowledge concentrated in these pages.James Joyce Literary Supplement
Review
The symbiotic nature of the relationship between literature and history in Ireland has provided James H. Murphy with a wonderful opportunity of which he has taken full advantage. In this volume he has presented us with a perceptive analysis of how literature and the social structure integrate to produce a Catholic fiction that allows for special insight into the Irish historical process between 1872 and 1922, and the result is a most innovative and creative effort in rendering art as evidence.Emmet Larkin Professor of British and Irish History The University of Chicago
Synopsis
Explores the outlook of certain important classes in late 19th- and early 20th-century Ireland through an assessment of Irish Catholic fiction.
Synopsis
The late 19th and early 20th century was a key period of cultural transition in Ireland. Fiction was used in a plainly partisan or polemical fashion to advance changes in Irish society. Murphy explores the outlook of certain important social classes during this time frame through an assessment of Irish Catholic fiction. This highly original study provides a new context for understanding the works of canonical authors such as Joyce and George Moore by discussing them in light of the now almost forgotten writing from which they emerged--the several hundred novels that were written during the period, many of them by women writers.
About the Author
JAMES H. MURPHY is Lecturer in English at All Hallows College, Dublin.