The Life of William Carleton, Vol. 1: Being His Autobiography and Letters (Classic Reprint)

Overview

Excerpt from The Life of William Carleton, Vol. 1: Being His Autobiography and Letters

Nearly thirty years have run their course since the death of Carleton, yet no attempt has hitherto been made to write his life. The lack of a biography of so remarkable a writer leaves an obvious gap in Irish literary history. Lever, Lover, Griffin, Banim, Miss Edgeworth, and Lady Morgan have each had their biographer or biographers. Carleton has either been overlooked, or the difficulty of presenting him to the world as he lived, acted, and was, has proved too great for the memoir writers of the intervening period. The difficulties involved in such a task were not such as could have been offered to any one dealing with the other novelists named. These difficulties were, however, growing fewer and less formidable with every year that passed, and the discovery of the unpublished account of Carleton's early life, now printed for the first time, helps to smooth the way of the biographer. The initial obstacle was the deficiency of material, and a hardly less serious one was the delicacy of dealing with the matter which was ultimately collected. 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.

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