Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Home
Hostname: page-component-59b7f5684b-hd9dq Total loading time: 0.374 Render date: 2022-10-05T15:41:31.616Z Has data issue: true Feature Flags: { "shouldUseShareProductTool": true, "shouldUseHypothesis": true, "isUnsiloEnabled": true, "useRatesEcommerce": false, "displayNetworkTab": true, "displayNetworkMapGraph": true, "useSa": true } hasContentIssue true
The Cambridge History of Irish Literature The Cambridge History of Irish Literature
Buy print or eBook[Opens in a new window]

Book contents

7 - Poetry in English, 1690–1800: from the Williamite wars to the Act of Union

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Andrew Carpenter
Edited by
Margaret Kelleher  and
Philip O'Leary
Margaret Kelleher
Affiliation:
National University of Ireland, Maynooth
Philip O'Leary
Affiliation:
Boston College, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

In December 1690, five months after the Battle of the Boyne, a little-known Dublin printer called John Brett printed the first poem of what was to be a golden age for Irish verse in English. The grandiloquent and florid ‘Ode to the King on his Irish Expedition’ was intended to flatter the unattractive but victorious Dutchman whom the Protestants of Ireland were hailing as their ‘Providential deliverer’ from the horrors of popery and tyranny under Jacobite rule.

What can the Poet’s humble Praise?

What can the Poet’s humble Bays?

(We Poets oft our Bays allow,

Transplanted to the Hero’s Brow)

Add to the Victor’s Happiness?

asked the poet, in a flourish of rhetorical exuberance. Whatever William of Orange might have answered to these – and many other similarly euphuistic – questions, the poet (a 23-year-old graduate of Trinity College, Dublin named Jonathan Swift) hoped that this – his first printed work – would be sufficiently well regarded by those around the king to bring him some reward for the trouble of writing it, and presumably for the expense of having it printed. Even though, it seems, nothing came of Swift’s efforts to attract patronage by the poem, the verse itself marks an important moment in the history of Irish poetry. Not only is it the first appearance in print of the poet who was to dominate Irish poetry in English for the first half of the eighteenth century, but it is also the first poem of the new Williamite era, one in which peace and prosperity in Ireland would provide a nurturing environment not only for the writing and reading of verse but for its printing. Between the Battle of the Boyne and the Act of Union, the muse of poetry was very busy in Ireland.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Irish Literature , pp. 282 - 319
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Purchase

Buy Book

Buy print or eBook[Opens in a new window]

References

Elias, A. C. Jr., ‘ Senatus Consultum: Revising Verse in Swift’s Dublin Circle, 1729–35’, in Real, Hermann J. and Stöver-Leidig, Helgard, eds. Reading Swift: Papers from The Third Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1998).Google Scholar
Brooke, Charlotte, ed. Reliques of Irish Poetry, Dublin, 1789.Google Scholar
Carpenter, Andrew and Harrison, Alan, ‘Swift’s “O’Rourke’s Feast” and Sheridan’s “Letter”: Early Transcripts by Anthony Raymond’, in Real, Hermann J. and Vienken, Heinz J., eds. Proceedings of the First Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1985).Google Scholar
Carpenter, Andrew, ed. Verse in English from Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
Carpenter, Andrew, ed. Verse in English from Tudor and Stuart Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Cole, Richard Cargill, Irish Booksellers and English Writers 1740–1800, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Concanen, Matthew, ed. Miscellaneous Poems, London, 1724.Google Scholar
Cullen, Cf. L. M., ‘Patrons, Teachers and Literacy in Irish: 1700–1850’, in Daly, Mary and Dickson, David, eds. The Origins of Popular Literacy in Ireland: Language Change and Educational Development 1700–1920 (Dublin: Trinity College and University College, 1990).Google Scholar
Edkins, Joshua, ed. A Collection of Poems, mostly original, by several hands, 2 vols. Dublin, 1789–90.Google Scholar
Elias, A. C. Jr., ed. Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington, 2 vols. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Foxon, D. F., English Verse 1701–1750: A Catalogue of Separately Printed Poems with Notes on Contemporary Collected Editions, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), II.Google Scholar
Hewitt, John, Rhyming Weavers (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1974).Google Scholar
Hogan, Robert, ed. The Poems of Thomas Sheridan, London and Newark, NJ: Associated University Presses and University of Delaware Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Hopkins, John, The Fall of Man (London, 1699).Google Scholar
Jacob, Giles, The Poetical Register (London, 1719–20).Google Scholar
Jenner, Henry, 8 June 1732, in The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. Williams, Harold, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963–5), IV.Google Scholar
Joyce, P. W., English as We Speak it in Ireland, ed. Dolan, T. P. (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1979).Google Scholar
Kilfeather, Siobhán ed., ‘The Profession of Letters 1700–1810’, in Bourke, A. et al., eds. The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, vols. IV and V: Irish Women’s Writing and Traditions (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002), v.Google Scholar
Lonsdale, Roger, ed. Eighteenth-Century Women Poets, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Lonsdale, Roger, ed. The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Pollard, M., Dublin’s Trade in Books 1550–1800 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), and Cole, Richard Cargill, Irish Booksellers and English Writers 1740–1800 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1986).Google Scholar
Musgrave, Richard, Memoirs of the Different Rebellions in Ireland, 2 vols. (London, 1802), I. Quoted in Zimmermann, , Songs of Irish Rebellion.Google Scholar
Ó Muirithe, Diarmaid, An tAmhrán Macarónach (Dublin: An Clóchomhar, 1980). But see also the story told about Donncha Rua Mac Conmara’s Gaelic and English distychs in Leerssen, Joep, Mere Irish and Fír-Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, its Development and Literary Expression prior to the Nineteenth Century, 2nd edn (Cork: Cork University Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Pollard, M., Dublin’s Trade in Books 1550–1800, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Rawson, Claude and Lock, F. P., eds. Collected Poems of Thomas Parnell, London and Newark, NJ: Associated University Presses and University of Delaware Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Redmond, James Grant, The Life of Thomas Dermody, 2 vols. (London, 1806), I.Google Scholar
The Collected Letters of Oliver Goldsmith, ed. Balderston, Katharine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), p. x.Google Scholar
Whyte, Samuel, ed. Poems on Various Subjects, Dublin, 1795.Google Scholar
Whyte, Samuel, ed. The Shamrock or Hibernian Cresses, a collection of Poems, Songs, Epigrams &c., Latin as well as English, the Original Production of Ireland, Dublin, 1772.Google Scholar
Williams, Harold, ed. The Poems of Jonathan Swift, 3 vols. 2nd edn, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958.Google Scholar
Woolley, James, ‘Swift’s First Published Poem: Ode. To the King ’ in Real, Hermann J. and Stöver-Leidig, Helgard, eds. Reading Swift: Papers from The Fourth Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2003). The text of the poem is reproduced in the article.Google Scholar
Zimmermann, Georges-Denis, Songs of Irish Rebellion: Political Street Ballads and Rebel Songs 1780–1900 (Dublin: Allen Figgis, 1967).Google Scholar
3
Cited by

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×