Ireland's experience in the nineteenth century was quite different from that of Victorian Britain. Its fictions were written in differing forms – like the gothic or historical novel – and its poetry and drama were populated with ballad and song. Its writers were by turns nationalist or unionist, anglophile or de-anglicising. If the effects of famine and emigration were catastrophic for mid-nineteenth-century Irish culture, they initiated a literary story that spread across the diaspora. Despite the decline of spoken Irish, literature continued to be published, while scholarly endeavours such as translation or the Ordnance Survey preserved much from the Gaelic past. This rich volume examines the many forms of new writing that thrived throughout this period. Utilizing a thematic and historical approach, it addresses a broad anglophone readership in Victorian literature. Essays consider the Irish authors in America and India, women's writing, and the resilience of Irish literature before the revival.

‘… a remarkably ambitious project, taking the temperature of Irish literature from 1730 to the present in approximately 2,400 pages.’

Anthony Roche Source: Irish Times

‘… show[s] how an attention to Irish writing can transform how we understand key concepts like romanticism; literary genres like realism, the gothic, ballads; political formations like empire and the transatlantic slave trade; and periodical culture. I highly recommend these books to scholars interested in learning more about Ireland as well as to established scholars of Irish literature.’

Mary L. Mullen Source: Nineteenth-Century Contexts