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SEIS Academic Forum Series （No.720）

Forum on Irish Studies

Two Irish Victorian novelists: William Carleton and Charles Lever

Speaker:  Prof. James H. Murphy (Boston College, USA)

Time:  15:00-17:00

Date: May 17, 2019 (Friday)

Venue: Room 115, School of English and International Studies

Abstract:

William Carleton and Charles Lever were perhaps the most famous Irish novelists of the mid nineteenth century in Britain. Carleton was hailed as ‘the peasant novelist’ because his work was said to give access to the experience of the poorer, rural classes in Ireland. Lever was at one stage more popular than Charles Dickens because his early ‘rollicking’ novels of Irish life amused British audiences. His reputation declined as he began seriously to address the problems facing Irish society. In this seminar we will learn of the background to these novelists’ work and read and discuss extracts from their novels.

About the speaker:

Professor James H. Murphy is director of Center for Irish Studies at Boston College, USA, and a member of the editorial board of the well-reputed journal New Hibernia Review. He is a distinguished scholar in Victorian literature and history, and his recent publications include Ireland’s Czar: Gladstonian Government and the Lord Lieutenancies of the Red Earl Spencer, 1868-86 (2014)，Irish Novelists and the Victorian Age (2011) and Abject Loyalty: Nationalism and Monarchy in Ireland, during the reign of Queen Victoria (2001).