TCD and QUB Collaborative Early Irish Fiction Research Project Publishes its First Volumes
Posted on: 29 March 2010
The first two volumes of a new series of edited texts as part of the ‘Early Irish Fiction, c.1680 – c.1820’ series were launched this week. The ‘Early Irish Fiction’ project is a collaborative research project between the School of English, Trinity College Dublin and the School of English, Queen’s University Belfast which oversees the publication of a series of critical editions of fictional texts designed for scholars and students of Irish writing in English and for all those concerned with Ireland during the period, 1680 -1820.
Edited by the TCD School of English’s Professor Ian Campbell Ross and Research Fellow, Dr Anne Markey, Vertue Rewarded; or, The Irish Princess (1693) is one of the earliest examples of Irish prose fiction. The second publication, Irish Tales by Sarah Butler (1716) was edited by Professor Campbell Ross, Dr Aileen Douglas, Senior Lecturer in the School of English and Anne Markey.
To mark the occasion of the launch of the publications by historian Dr Toby Barnard, Hertford College, University of Oxford, a seminar on ‘Early Irish Fiction, c.1680 – c. 1820’ took place in Trinity which was attended by scholars from TCD, UCD, UCC, NUI Maynooth, QUB, UU, St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra as well as from England, Italy and Belgium.
Irish prose fiction of the long eighteenth century has only recently begun to receive the attention it merits. While such names as Swift, Goldsmith and Edgeworth have long been familiar to readers of Irish (and British) literature, many other writers – born, educated, or living in Ireland – produced a substantial and imaginatively varied body of fiction from the late-seventeenth to the early-nineteenth century. This series aims more fully to indicate the diversity and breadth of Irish literature in the period 1680-1820 by providing critical editions of a range of exemplary works of prose fiction. In so doing, it will indicate the role the early novel played in inventing Ireland for readers at home and abroad, while offering new perspectives on the literature and history of these islands.
Commenting on the significance of the publications, Professor Ross said: ‘The Early Irish Fiction’ project makes previously unavailable fictions from this era readily accessible to scholars and students. Vertue Rewarded; or, The Irish Princess is one of the first works of Irish prose fiction. Historical materials in Irish Tales are drawn from one of the best-known Irish language accounts of the Irish past, Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éireann completed in c.1643, a major work of history that had not appeared in print, but which circulated in elite literary circles in Irish and English-language manuscripts.”
The series was launched in America earlier this month when Dr Douglas and Professor Ross travelled to Notre Dame University to deliver a research seminar on the topic.
The three general editors of the series are Ian Campbell Ross, Aileen Douglas and Moyra Haslett, a former undergraduate and PhD student in TCD, now Senior Lecturer in English at Queen’s University Belfast. Another five volumes are currently in various stages of preparation, by different editors.
The ‘Early Irish Fiction’ project has been assisted by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin. The series is being published by Four Courts Press.