''The Macdermots of Ballycloran'' is a novel by
Anthony Trollope. It was Trollope's first published novel, which he began in September 1843 and completed by June 1845. However, it was not published until 1847. The novel was "an abysmal failure with the reading public."
[Sutherland, John (1989). ''The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction'', p. 393. Stanford University Press. .]
The novel was written while Trollope was staying in the village of
Drumsna,
County Leitrim
County Leitrim ( ; gle, Contae Liatroma) is a county in Ireland. It is in the province of Connacht and is part of the Northern and Western Region. It is named after the village of Leitrim. Leitrim County Council is the local authority for the ...
, Ireland.
Plot summary
The narrative of ''The Macdermots of Ballycloran'' "chronicles the tragic demise of a small Catholic landowning family in the
Protestant-dominated Ireland of the mid-19th century. It focuses on the struggle of Thady Macdermot to keep his sinking property afloat. Thady lives with his father Larry Macdermot in a dilapidated mansion in Co. Leitrim, which is mortgaged to their enemy, the vulgar builder Joe Flannelly. They cannot keep up the payments on the mortgage. Enmity between the Macdermot and Flannelly families is sharpened by Thady's having declined to marry Joe's daughter, Sally. Larry Macdermot's daughter, Feemy (christened 'Euphemia'), is seduced by
Royal Irish Constabulary
The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC, ga, Constáblacht Ríoga na hÉireann; simply called the Irish Constabulary 1836–67) was the police force in Ireland from 1822 until 1922, when all of the country was part of the United Kingdom. A separate ...
officer Captain Myles Ussher, who is hated by the local Catholic majority for his brutal enforcement of the excise laws against
poteen distilling. One night Thady comes home to find Ussher abducting Feemy and kills him in the ensuing struggle. Despite the mitigating circumstances, the Protestant-dominated courts find Thady guilty of murder, in the context of a panic about crime, and fears of Thady's potential connection to
Irish nationalist groups. Thady is hanged, his father Larry goes mad, Feemy dies bearing Ussher's bastard and the Ballycloran house is finally vacated of Macdermots."
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Quote
Trollope, in his autobiography, said the following concerning ''The Macdermots of Ballycloran'':
"As to the plot itself, I do not know that I ever made one so good,- or, at any rate, one so susceptible of pathos. I am aware that I broke down in the telling, not having yet studied the art. Nevertheless, ''The Macdermots'' is a good novel, and worth reading by anyone who wishes to understand what Irish life was before the potato disease, the famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompani ...
, and the Encumbered Estates Bill."[Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography, pg 71, Oxford World's Classics, 1999.]
References
External links
Plot summary and notes
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1847 British novels
Novels by Anthony Trollope
Novels set in Ireland
County Leitrim
1847 debut novels
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