''The Wild Irish Girl; a National Tale'' is an

epistolary novel An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of letters. The term is often extended to cover novels that intersperse documents of other kinds with the letters, most commonly diary entries and newspaper clippings, and sometimes considered ...

written by Irish novelist

Sydney Owenson Sydney, Lady Morgan (''née'' Owenson; 25 December 1781? – 14 April 1859), was an Irish novelist, best known for '' The Wild Irish Girl'' (1806)'','' a romantic, and some critics suggest, "proto-feminist", novel with political and patriotic o ...

(later Lady Morgan) in 1806.

Plot

The Hon. Horatio M———, the younger son of the Earl of M———, is banished to his father's estate on the northwest coast of

Connacht Connacht ( ; ga, Connachta or ), is one of the provinces of Ireland, in the west of Ireland. Until the ninth century it consisted of several independent major Gaelic kingdoms ( Uí Fiachrach, Uí Briúin, Uí Maine, Conmhaícne, and Del ...

(i.e.

County Sligo County Sligo ( , gle, Contae Shligigh) is a county in Ireland. It is located in the Border Region and is part of the province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the an ...

) as punishment for accumulating large debts, neglecting his legal studies, and "presiding as the high priest of libertinism at the nocturnal orgies of vitiated dissipation" during his life in London. The novel is primarily epistolary, and its story unfolds via letters written by Horatio to his friend J.D., an MP. In Ireland, Horatio finds a dilapidated castle and the remnants of the Catholic Gaelic nobility that was displaced by his ancestors after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. Living in the castle are the Prince of Inismore, his daughter, the beautiful and talented Glorvina, and their devoted Catholic priest, Father John. Horatio ends up staying with the family under the assumed character of a penniless artist, as he does not want to betray his family's role in displacing the Prince of Inismore's family (technically referred to as the O’Melvilles, although the Prince refuses such a mundane title). Through conversations with the family, Horatio learns a new respect for Irish history and culture, which Owenson underscores in extensive

footnotes A note is a string of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document or at the end of a chapter, volume, or the whole text. The note can provide an author's comments on the main text or citations of a reference work in support of th ...

, made in the seemingly objective voice of an editor; these footnotes both expand on and defend the Irish cultural and historical arguments made by the Prince and Glorvina. Horatio and Glorvina also begin to fall in love, and their interactions demonstrate the novel's indebtedness to/possible parodying of the tradition of

sensibility Sensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another. This concept emerged in eighteenth-century Britain, and was closely associated with studies of sense perception as the means thro ...

. Their courtship gets halted by Horatio's father's plan to marry his son to a wealthy heiress, and by the existence of a mysterious suitor for Glorvina's hand. A seemingly omniscient third-person narrator takes charge of the denouement, explaining how Horatio gets saved from having to make this mercenary marriage when his intended runs off. At almost the same time, the Prince dies, and Glorvina's mysterious suitor is revealed to be Horatio's father, the Earl of M———, who had also been using a secret identity to cultivate a relationship with the Prince in order to make reparations for his forefathers’ crimes. However, the Earl reveals that he was only intending to marry Glorvina out of obligation but not love and is therefore very happy to let Horatio marry her instead. The novel ends with a return to the epistolary mode: the Earl of M——— writes to Horatio, explaining his history with the Prince's family, and exhorting Horatio to be a responsible husband and landlord. Finally, the text implies that this potentially happy and fruitful individual union between an English man and an Irish woman might also augur a happy future for the recent union of their two countries.

Reception

The novel instantly became a favorite in England, and went through seven editions in less than two years. In America, it reached its fourth edition by 1807. The book's popularity spawned a line of fashion accessories, such as the "Glorvina ornament" brooch named after the heroine.

References

External links

''The Wild Irish Girl''
a
The University of Adelaide Library

Online text of ''The Wild Irish Girl''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wild Irish Girl, The 1806 novels Irish romance novels Epistolary novels Novels set in Ireland 19th-century Irish novels County Mayo