Notes and critical perspectives on William Carleton

Charles A. Read (1880)

William Carleton the 'Walter Scott of Ireland,' as he was not unjustly called by O’ Connell - was born at Prillisk, County Tyrone, in 1794. Several writers have placed his birth four years later; but the earlier date is the correct one. He was the youngest of fourteen children. His parents were in very humble circumstances; for they had to support themselves and their large family on a farm of but fourteen acres. Carleton, in fact, was born a peasant. His parents, however, though thus poor in material gifts, appear to have been rich in intellectual endowment, and to their early influence Carleton owed much of his after success. He himself has drawn the portraits of his father and mother; and though we may see the partiality of filial affection in the pictures, they bear, at the same time, the proof of fidelity to truth.

W.B. Yeats (1891)

The true peasant was at last speaking, stammering, illogically, bitterly, but nonetheless with the deep and mournful accent of the people . He at first exaggerated, in deference to his audience, the fighting, and the dancing, and the merriment, and made the life of his class seem more exuberant and buoyant than it was.. .As time went on, his work grew deeper in nature, and in the second series [of Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry] he gave all his heart to ‘The Poor Scholar’, ‘Tubber Derg’, and ‘Wildgoose Lodge’. The humorist found his conscience, and, without throwing away laughter, became the historian of his class.

Sir Shane Leslie (1930)

Though he wrote for hire and abused every class and creed in turn, yet genius will out, and Carleton lives because he had already lived so much that he described. Compare Carleton with every contemporary that attempted to dip his pen in Irish gall or gaiety. Miss Edgeworth's finished artistry pales before his rich torrential canvas, and she never found herself very far beyond the Castle and the Hall. Lever dissipated himself for a perennial after-dinner audience. Lover was Lever running to seed. Lady Morgan was an ambitious Miss Edgeworth. Mrs. Hall wrote for a Baedeker unborn. None of them had ever lived in a cabin or known Irish as a spoken tongue.

Benedict Kiely (1947)

He (Carleton) had his credit for it (literary oeuvre); not much money, for he was a bad man at business; not much worldly comfort, beyond the fragrance of poteen punch, or the beauty of rivers and mountains and green fields, or the love and contentment of his own hearth. But he had praise from great men who were few, from small men who were many, and from some blame and bitter words.