Born, at Prillisk, co. Tyrone, 20 Feb. 1794 (according to his autobiography; 4 March according to his tombstone). Educated at various small schools in neighbourhood. Intended for Church, but idea soon abandoned. Apprenticed to stone-cutter, 1814. Private tutor in farmer’s family, co. Louth, 1814. To Dublin, 1818; engaged in tuition. Clerk to Sunday School Society. Married Jane Anderson, [1820?]. Began to contribute to various periodicals; to “Christian Examiner,” 1828–30; to “National Magazine,” 1830–31; Granted Crown pension of £200, 14 July 1848. Visit to London, Oct. to Nov. 1850. Died, at Sandford, co. Dublin, 30 Jan. 1869. Works: “Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry” (anon.), 2 series, 1830–33; “Tales of Ireland” (anon.), 1834; “Fardorougha the Miser,” 1839; “Father Butler,” 1839; “The Fawn of Springvale, etc.,” 1841 (2nd ed., entitled “Jane Sinclair,” 1849); “Valentine McClutchy,” 1845; “Rody the Rover,” 1845; “Parra Sastha,” 1845; “Art Maguire,” 1847; “The Black Prophet,” 1847; “The Emigrants of Ahadarra,” 1847; “The Tithe Proctor,” 1849; “The Clarionet, etc.,” 1850; “Red Hall,” 1852 (2nd edn., entitled “The Black Baronet,” 1857); “The Squanders of Castle Squander,” 1852; “Willy Reilly,” 1855 (2nd edn., same year); “The Emigrants,” 1857; “The Evil Eye,” 1860; “The Double Prophecy,” 1862; “Redmond, Count O’Hanlon,” 1862; “The Silver Acre, etc.,” 1862. Posthumous: “The Fair of Emyvale, etc.,” 1870; “The Red-Haired Man’s Wife,” 1889. Life: (including Autobiography and Letters) by D. J. O’Donoghue, 1896.

Personal

  I have not much to say of Carleton, and very little that is good. Undoubtedly he was a powerful writer, a marvelous delineator of Irish character—seen, however, not from its best side. He was essentially of the people he describes, peasant-born and peasant-bred, and most at home in a mud cabin or shebeen-shop…. He never obtained, never earned, the applause of his country or the respect of those whose respect was worth having in Dublin, the city where he dwelt. He was a Catholic to-day and a Protestant to-morrow, turning from one religion to the other as occasion served or invited. It is requisite to name him here, among the many Irish authors I have known; but I did not feel for him while he lived, nor can I feel for him now, any respect.

  For the right understanding of the whole of his character and his life, and for the full appraisement of his works, it is necessary always to bear in mind Carleton’s peasant origin and all that it meant and comprised in the Ireland of his time, not only for the mere marvel of what the man achieved, but because, while he glorified his origin by interpreting his people to the world, he retained its salient characteristics and its distinctive limitations. This fact, while it was of disadvantage to him in the conduct of affairs, and the contacts of life, was of incalculable value to his work, and furnishes the true explanation of his pre-eminence over other national novelists whose endowments and sympathy equalled, while their skill and culture surpassed his own.

  Carleton had earned the reputation of being in every sense a “queer fish;” he had been accused of obvious and consistent insincerity; and charges of mercenary motives and of reckless partisanship were so often brought against him, with other more or less absurd accusations, that it is not surprising that the biographer has hitherto left him alone. That he has been too hardly judged, the present work, it is hoped, will make evident. It is, however, proven that he was somewhat reckless and inconsistent, and his more inexcusable actions cannot be condoned or explained satisfactorily. It would be manifestly impossible to conceal his patent defects, and equally so to explain them away or applaud them—the only way out of the difficulty is to tell the story of his life from the moment at which his own version breaks off, with impartiality, and, where it is possible, with the truest sympathy. That story reveals a great genius, an undisciplined temperament; a man of many moods and faults, but lovable withal; a man of whom his countrymen will always be justly proud, although he vexed them sorely. Carleton gave offense to every class of Irishmen in one or other of his books, and all that can be done by way of extenuation or excuse is to explain the incidents which seem to have occasioned his conduct.

General

  If Banim may be characterized as the dramatic historian of his countrymen, Carleton may with equal truth be styled their faithful portrait-painter. He draws from the life.

  Carleton is the historian of the peasantry rather than a dramatist. The fiddler and piper, the seanachie and seer, the matchmaker and dancing-master, and a hundred characters beside, are here brought before you, moving, acting, playing, plotting and gossiping. You are never wearied by an inventory of wardrobes, as in short English descriptive fictions; yet you see how every one is dressed; you hear the honey brogue of the maiden, and the downy voice of the child, the managed accents of flattery or traffic, the shrill tones of woman’s fretting, and the troubled gush of men’s anger. The moory upland and the corn slopes, the glen where the rock juts through mantling heather, and bright brooks gurgle amid the scented banks of wild herbs, the shivering cabin and the rudely-lighted farmhouse, are as plain in Carleton’s pages as if he used canvass and colours with a skill varying from Wilson and Poussin, to Teniers and Wilkie…. Endowed with the highest dramatic genius, he has represented their love and generosity, their wrath and negligence, their crimes and virtues, as a hearty peasant—not a note-taking critic.

  He is not only Irish, but thoroughly Irish, intensely Irish, exclusively Irish…. It is in his pages, and in his alone, that future generations must look for the truest and fullest—though still far from complete—picture of those who will ere long have passed away from that troubled land, from the records of history, and from the memory of man forever.

  The only three names which Ireland can point to with pride are Griffin’s, Banim’s, and—do not accuse me of vanity when I say—my own. Banim and Griffin are gone, and I will soon follow them—ultimus Romanorum, and after that will come a lull, an obscurity of perhaps half a century when a new condition of civil society and a new phase of manners and habits among the people—for this is a transition state—may introduce new fields and new tastes for other writers, for in this manner the cycles of literature and taste appear, hold their day, displace each other, and make room for others.

  There is much in William Carleton’s writings to instruct and delight us. There are some things which we might wish altered or forgotten; but if the best lines that he recorded, and these feeble words which have sprung from them, may lead any of us nearer to Him in whom he found his peace, then his death will prove of more value than his life, and his last words more than all the rest.

  He seems to have formed a fair and just estimate of the character of his countrymen, and to have drawn it as it actually appeared to him at home and abroad—in feud and in festival—in the various scenes which passed before him in his native district and during his subsequent rambles.

  Those who are fond of studying the early stages of society will mark in these pages many primitive customs and ancient superstitions, while the narrative sparkles with quaint humor, and occasionally affords us glimpses of wild and romantic scenery…. As he moved more in town society, the tone of his writings altered: they lost their original simplicity, and became political. The famine years accelerated the change, and he now began to portray the tenant as an oppressed man, and to paint the landlord as a drunken profligate…. But it must be admitted that this was part of the strong coloring which the novelist generally adopted, and that, if he represented the landlord as often harsh and extravagant, he added that the tenant was often improvident and dishonest; if he depicted one nobleman as vicious, he contrasted him with another who was refined and honorable.

  It is certain that under the often transparent guise of fiction Carleton is a faithful and a very sympathetic historian of the Irish people.

  It is an easy task to define Carleton’s position in Irish literature. He is unquestionably supreme so far as fiction is concerned. But his position in literature generally is not easy to define. Judging him by his best work only—by his wonderful knowledge of human nature, and not by his style—he should occupy one of the proudest places in the whole gallery of masters who have made a study of the human heart. It is imperative to consider for this purpose only the truest revelations of his genius. Judged otherwise, his average merit is not great. There is hardly another writer between whose best and worst writing there is so wide and deep a distinction. Any writer who has written so much must needs have produced something unworthy of his highest powers; but to be perfectly candid no writer has given to the world work more essentially unfit to live than are Carleton’s weakest efforts.

  If fineness of literary quality alone were in question, the first place must be assigned to William Carleton, whose “Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry” are the most carefully executed of their class. Carleton had neither the verve nor the copiousness of Lover, who has been fixed upon by popular judgment as the leading Irish novelist of his time.

  There was nothing classic in his writings, occasionally, indeed, there was an independence of grammar calculated to disturb the shade of Lindley Murray. But if his language was not always correct, it was living to a degree. There was nothing of the Dryasdust element about it. His sentences were warm, vivid, palpitating with energy and emotion. Although he might not be able to turn a period with men like Matthew Arnold or Sainte-Beuve, neither could such wielders of a model diction emulate his Titanic rendering of the passions, or his bursts of rugged and perfervid eloquence…. As a novelist, Carleton was superior in one respect to either Dickens or Thackeray. He could draw women better. So far as I remember there is not a weak creation among all his female characters. They are living, breathing, loving creatures—women capable of inspiring a deep affection, and at the same time worthy of it. Where is there a nobler being in fiction than Helen Folliard, the heroine of “Willy Reilly?” The way she cheers her lover in all his difficulties, remains true to him through unexampled trials, and finally testifies in his favour when he is tried for life, has something truly sublime in it. Similar praise is due for the way in which he draws many other heroines. I find in all Carleton’s writings something of the forceful energy and dramatic intensity which characterize the novels of Charlotte and Emily Brontë. His people palpitate with life. From the moment they appear to the last glimpses we have of them we see real men and women, and not phantoms.