Carleton, WILLIAM

Carleton, WILLIAM, Irish novelist, was born in 1794 at Prillisk, in County Tyrone. Of peasant birth, the youngest of fourteen children, he received some scanty instruction in a hedge-school; and falling in with a copy of Gil Blas about the same time that he gave up all thoughts of the priesthood, he came up to Dublin with only three shillings in his pocket. He thought first of turning bird-stuffer, of enlisting, then took to tuition, and finally to literature, contributing to the Christian Examiner a series of sketches, which in 1830 he republished under the title of Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry. Their freshness of style pleased the public; a second series (1833) was no less well received; and in 1839 appeared the powerful story, Fardorougha the Miser, in several passages of which, however, his humour becomes extravagant. He next published a series of tales (3 vols. 1841), mostly of pathetic interest, but including a very genial and humorous sketch of the Misfortunes of Barney Branagan, which proved a great favourite. Valentine M'Clatchy (1845) is half-political and half-religious in its tendency, defending the Irish Catholic priesthood, and advocating repeal of the Union. Rody the Rover (1846), The Black Prophet (1847), and The Tithe Proctor (1849) are also worthy of mention. Carleton is the true historian of the Irish people. Sharing in their qualities of mind and temperament, he has a true sympathy with all their joys and sorrows, and a graphic and picturesque pen with which to describe them. He was shiftless, improvident, affectionate to a fault, and latterly had a pension of £200. He died at Dublin 30th January 1869. See the Life (containing part of his autobiography) by O'Donoghue (1896).