The Autobiography of William Carleton
with a foreword by Benedict Kiely (The White Row Press, 1996; other editions are now available on line).
This is the unfinished autobiography of William Carleton. Although it ends well short of when he died on January 30, 1869, together with his other writings, it is an important source for the social history and culture of 19th-century Ireland. And this edition is greatly enhanced by Benedict Kiely’s perceptive Foreword.
Carleton was born on March 4, 1794 near Clogher, Co. Tyrone. His father was a Catholic tenant farmer. William was educated at a few local hedge schools.
He exhibited early intellectual ability and his father hoped he would see him ordained to the priesthood. This was also an ambition shared by William. Hence he spent two years studying in St Patrick’s College, Maynooth.
However, his experiences while on a pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory in Lough Derg caused him not only to lose his vocation but also, as he wrote subsequently, “detached me from the Roman Catholic Faith”.
Not having settled to any occupation he left home in 1818 and found occasional work as a tutor. Then he held a number of teaching jobs in Dublin, Mullingar and Carlow.
In 1827 he met Reverend Caesar Otway, a writer and magazine editor and an enthusiastic proselytiser for Protestantism. At Otway’s suggestion he wrote a number of stories for the Church of Ireland Christian Examiner. The short stories grew into a very successful series, entitled Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, the work for which Carleton was to become best known. He was prolific, also contributing stories to the unionist Dublin University Magazine and the nationalist Nation. Influenced by Thomas Davis, he also published a number of novels on political and social themes.
Carleton’s last years were characterised by drunkenness and poverty”
Carleton reached the high point of his career in the 1840s. He was granted a government pension in 1848. This followed a public petition, which was signed by a cross section of the Irish political and intellectual life of the time. Among those who signed it was Maria Edgeworth, one of the pioneers of the Irish tale. She wrote that Carleton’s writing gave ‘with masterly stokes and in such strong and vivid colours the pictures of our country’s manners, her virtues and her vices’.
Carleton’s last years were characterised by drunkenness and poverty and it was a time when he succeeded in offending almost everybody he met. But, it seems, one friend remained with him to the end. His home was near the Jesuit College at Milltown Park in Dublin and Fr Robert Carbery SJ, a member of the community, as Carleton lay dying sent a message that he would come and give him the ‘Last Rites’. However, Carleton sent back word that he had not been a ‘Roman Catholic for half-a century or more’!
Benedict Kiely in his Foreword brilliantly captures the spirit of Carleton. Indeed they were kindred spirits. Both were proud sons of Tyrone; both studied for the priesthood; both were distinguished literary figures and most of all both excelled in story-telling. But, while Kiely merely gently teased his fellow-countrymen and women for their failings and foibles, Carleton was brutally honest in displaying their coarseness, fecklessness and savagery at wakes, weddings and faction-fights; as well as their secret societies, superstitions, popular beliefs and family feuds and in so doing earned unforgiving opprobrium. But to his credit by his brutal candour, as one chronicler noted, he succeeded in offending ‘every class of Irishman’!
For further information about Carleton, editions of his work and events in Ireland and elsewhere, contact wcarletonsociety@gmail.com for bookings and further information, and at www.williamcarletonsociety.org