Carleton, William

Carleton, William, 1794–1869, Irish author. His Traits and Stories of Irish Peasantry (5 vol., 1830–33) realistically depicts his own rural youth. This was followed by Tales of Ireland (1834), Fardorougha the Miser (1839), and The Black Prophet (1847).

Bibliography

See study by B. Kiely (1947).

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Carleton, William 

Born 1794 in Prillisk, County Tyrone; died Jan. 30, 1869, in Dublin. Irish writer and journalist.

Carleton became famous with the publication of Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (vols. 1–2, 1830). In the 1840’s he joined a group of revolutionary democratic writers associated with the journal Nation. His realistic novels, Valentine McClutchy, the Irish Agent, or Chronicles of the Castle Camber Property (1845) and The Black Prophet, A Tale of the Famine (1847), portrayed the tragic struggle of the peasants against hunger and disease.

WORKS

Autobiography. London, 1968.

REFERENCES

Kiely, B. Poor Scholar: A Study of the Works and Days of W. Carleton (1794–1869). London, 1947.
Flanagan, T. The Irish Novelists, 1800–1850. New York, 1959.