Life
?1885-1933; b. Co. Clare, d. Bray; dg. J. K. Dunne, lived in Limerick;
popular novelist before World War One with Carrow of Carrowduff
(1911), and Our Own Country (1913); DIW IF
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References
REF Ireland in Fiction, ed. Stephen Brown (Dublin: Maunsel
1919), lists Jacquetta (London: Washbourne; NY: Benziger 1910); Love is Life (London: Greening 1910); Carrow of Carrowduff (Greening
1911); The King’s Kiss (Digby, Long 1912); Our Own Country (Dublin: Duffy 1913), sequel to Carrowduff; Daffodil’s
Love Affairs (Holden & Hardingham 1913) [gentlefolk, Carlingford
and London]; Mary, A Roamnce of the West Country (London: Washbourne
1915). In Carrowduff, set in Co. Clare (‘west county’),
the son of unpopular landlord goes to wake, is wounded, nursed by young
nun, hero proposes - she has loved him all along - married by death-bead
of his father, a victim of the Land League. In Our Own Country,
an English gentleman is converted to Catholicism and marries Mrs. Monsel,
a widow and mother in law of Cesare Carrow (hero of above). The King’s
Ass and Love is Life, also sequenced, are set in the court
of Louis XIV, where Iseult Dymphna Macnamara falls in love with the son
of Patrick Sarsfield. Romantic involvement with Louis reveals a high degree
of fantasy, and also a peculiar inclination of the nationalist imagination
to establish aristocratic connections. beyond England. See also Irish
Book Lover, Vols. 3, 5.
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