Charles Lever (1806-72)

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Bibliographical details
Tom Burke of “Ours” (London: Dicks [n.d.]) [double-column edition]. CONTENTS: I. Myself [9]; Darby - The “ Blast” [14]; III. The Departure [19]; IV. My Wanderings [22]; V. The Cabin [24]; VI. My Education [29] VII. Kevin-street [31]; VIII. N0. 39, and its Frequenters [34]; IX. The Frenehman’s Story [38]; X. The Churchyard [41]; XI. Too Late [43]; XII. A Character [50]; XIII. An Unlooked-for Visitor [53]; XIV. The Gaol [56]; XV. The Castle [59]; XVI. The Bail [61] XVII. Mr. Basset’s Dwelling [63]; XVIII. The Captain’s Quarters [66]; XIX. The Quarrel [69]; XX. The Flight [72]; XXI. The École Militaire [79]; XXII. The Tuileries in 1803 [84]; XXIII. A Surprise [85]; XXIV. The Pavillon de Flore [88]; XXV. The Supper at Beauvilliers’ [92]; XXVI. The Two Visits [94]; XXVII. The March to Versailles [99]; XXVIII.The Park of Versailles [101]; XXIX. La Rose de Provence [106]; XXX. A Warning [109]; XXXI. The Chateau [112]; XXXII. The Chateau D’Ancre [116]; XXXIII. The Temple [119]; XXXIV.The Chouans [123]; XXXV.The Reign of Terror under the Consulate [126]; XXXVI. The Palais de Justice [132]; XXXII. The Trial [134]; XXXVIII.The Cuirassier [138]; XXXIX. A Morning at the Tuileries [140]; XL. A Night in the Tuileries Gardens [146]; Story of the ‘92 [150]; XLII. The Hall of the Marshals [156-74; END]. Also, Dedicatory letter ‘to Miss Edgeworth’, and A Parting Word” [both as quoted, infra], signed Templeogue House, 25 Aug. 1844.]

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The O’Donoghue: A Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago (Dublin: William Curry, Jun. & Co.; London: William S. Orr. & Co.; Edinburgh: Fraser & Co. 1845), 410pp. [XLIX chaps; ded. to John Wilson, Esq. [Prof. of Moral Phil. at Univ. of Edinburgh; signed Carlsrühe, October 18th 1845; printed by Purdon Brothers, Dublin, Bachelor’s-walk]; Do. [another edn.], 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown 1894). [See under Quotations, infra.]

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The Knight of Gwynne: A Tale of the Time of the Union, 2 vols. (London: Chapman & Hall MDCCCXLVII [1847]), x, 628pp., ill. [by Phiz; 39 lvs. of pls.], 8°; Do. (London: Chapman & Hall 1850, 1851, 1856, 1858, 1860, 1867 [8th edn.]), ill. [by Phiz]; Do. [new edn.] (London: Chapman & Son [1871]), iv, 618pp., ill. [40 ills. by Phiz]; Do., 2 vols. (London: George Routledge & Sons [1872]), xvi, 397pp.; Do. [with a new autobiog. introduction] (London: Chapman & Hall 1875, 1876); Do. [another edn.] 2 vols. (1877), ill. [by Phiz]; Do. 2 vols. [Novels of Charles Lever ser., 9-10] (London: Downey 1897), xxi, 426pp.; vi, 437pp., ill. [21 & 19] lvs. of pls.; incls. Author's preface signed Trieste, 1872; 23cm.].

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Confessions of Con Cregan: The Irish Gil Blas, 2 vols. ([London:] Wm. S. Orr, Amen Corner [1849]), viii, 336pp., ill. [on wood and steel by H. K. Brown[e]; 18cm.; Do. [3rd Edn.] (1856); Do. [4th Edn.] , 2 vols. in 1 (London: George Routledge & Sons 1872), ill. [by Hablot Knight Browne]; Do. [Charles Lever's Works] (London: George Routledge & Sons [1876]), xvi, 496pp., ill. [by Hablot Knight Browne aka Phiz; other ills. signed by E. Evans and E. Whimper]; Do. [copyright edn.] (London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1891), 224pp.; Do. [Novels of Charles Lever Ser., 13] (London: Downey 1898), xix, 642pp., ill. [by “Phiz”; 28 lvs. of pls.; 1,000 exemplars printed] Note: 1849 edn. often listed as [1850]; available in 35mm. microfilm at Cambridge UL in Mellon Microfilm Project , 1990 [CUL.CM00201].

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Bibliographical details
Tony Bareham, ed., Charles Lever: New Evaluations [Ulster Monographs] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1992), xv,131p., ill. [facs., map, ports.] Charles Lever: New Evaluations. CONTENTS: Bareham, Introduction: ‘The Famous Irish Lever’; A. Norman Jeffares, ‘Reading Lever’; Lorna Reynolds, ‘A Tale of Love and War: Charles O’Malley; Bill Rodgers. ‘Dr. Lever in Portstewart’; Richard Haslam, ‘Transitional States in Lever’; Chris Morash, ‘Lever’s Post-Famine Landscape’; Bareham, ‘Charles Lever and The Outsider’.

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William Carleton, ‘The Late John Banim, Esq.’, [National Gallery, No. V], in The Nation (23 Sept. 1843), writes: “Unlike Mr. Lever, he never tramples upon truth and probability, nor offers disgusting and debasing caricatures of Irish life and feeling, as the characteristics of our country. He would not, for instance, clothe a Catholic priest in black buckskin breeches, because he happens to love the manly exercise of horesmanship, nor would he have him romping and raking to-day, in a state of drunkenness and sobriety, and stiffened into spasms of convulsive piety to-morrow.’ [See further under John Banim, Commentary, infra.]

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William Carleton: Carleton wrote a ‘deeply critical, unsigned review in The Nation in which he accused Lever of “selling us for pounds, shillings, and pence” (Nation, 7 Oct. 1843, p.826; quoted in this style in Margaret Kelleher, ‘Prose Writing and Drama in English; 1830-1890 […]’, Cambridge History of Irish Literature, ed. Kelleher & Philip O’Leary (Cambridge UP 2006), Vol. 1 [Chap. 11], p.467.)

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Charles Gavan Duffy: Duffy’s criticism of Lever’s plagiarism in The Nation (1843) deals with a passage from William Hamilton Maxwell’s Adventures of Captain Blake, or My Life (1835; 2nd edn. 1838) which is closely copied by Lever in Charles O’Malley [1842]; other works plagiarised by Lever, as Duffy shows, are Eyre Evans Crowe’s Today in Ireland (1825) and Walter Scott’s The Antiquary (1815), as as well as Benjamin Disraeli’s Vivian Grey, Teeling’s Narrative of the Irish Rebellion, &ci., and Watty Cox’s Magazine (See Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, pp.1255-65.)

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Samuel Ferguson: Ferguson wrote to Blackwood Magazine (June 1843; Nat. Library of Scotland, 4065), expressing regret that ‘our literary people have got into such a habit of self-caricature that they seem to take a pride in being despise. I allude principally to Lever who has given Thackeray’s book a most fulsome puff in the Dublin University Magazine’; shortly after, Ferguson writes to the same editor: ‘From your making no use of my letter about that rascally Thackeray I conclude that you find it too local or perhaps to [sic] Irish for your pages’ [Quoted in Chris Corr, ‘English Literary Culture and Irish Literary Revival’, PhD Thesis, UUC 1995].

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W. B. Yeats: ‘Charles Lever, unlike Lover and Croker, wrote mainly for his own class. His books are quite sufficiently truthful, but more than any other Irish writer has he caught the ear of the world and come to stand for the entire nation. The vices and virtues of his characters are alike those of the gentry - a gentry such as Ireland has had, with no more sense of responsibility, as a class, than have the dullahans, thrivishes, sowlths, bowas and water sheries of the spirit-ridden peasantry.’ (Representative Irish Tales, NY 1891, pp.5-6); and see further under W. B. Yeats.

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W. B. Yeats: Yeats wrote of Lever that, like his contemporary Samuel Lover, he ‘wrote ever with one eye on London’ (‘Popular Ballad Poetry of Ireland’ [1889]; rep. in Uncollected Prose by W. B. Yeats, ed. John P. Frayne, Vol. 1, London: Macmillan 1970, p.162; quoted in Margaret Kelleher, ‘Prose Writing and Drama in English; 1830-1890 […]’, in Cambridge History of Irish Literature, ed. Kelleher & Philip O’Leary, Cambridge UP 2006, Vol. 1 p.469.) [See also remark on the tastes of the Anglo-Irish Garrison in The King of the Great Clock Tower, in Yeats, q.v., Quotations, infra.]

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Maurice Egan, ‘Irish Novels’, in Irish Literature (1904), Vol. VI, pp.vii-xvii [prev. printed as ‘On Irish Novels’ in Catholic University Bulletin [Washington, D.C.], 10, 3 (July 1904), pp.329-41]: ‘Lever is the first of all the romancers of military life, as Maxwell is of the Sporting life of the Irish gentry. Maxwell’s best work is in The Wild Sports of the West; it has all the sparkle, all the recklessness of Lever in his Leveresque moods. It is evident, in this book, that congenial tastes bound Lever and Maxwell together. No succeeding writer in any language [335] has given to the life of the camp and barracks the glamour with which governments endeavour to make them alluring by means of gold lace, flags and music, but the brilliance of Lever is a surface brilliance. It seems almost a pity that Lever should have chosen Ireland and Irish influences as his themes, for no writer has given the Irish a more widespread reputation for that irresponsibility and volatility, - so agreeably contemplated by a dominant race, - than this very clever romancer. He stands alone in literature; in lightmindedness, in that gaiety of heart which leads to anything but gaiety of head in the morning, who can come near him? He apotheosises wine, women and song and makes the primrose path of dalliance as agreeable as the Moore-Anacreon pictures of heaven where rosy cupids float on bubbles of rosier champagne. He saves himself always from mere coarseness or vulgarity, and he is so light-hearted that nobody seriously asks whether his point of view is moral or not. His pictures of Dublin society in its bloom will live, and his fun no doubt continue to smooth the wrinkles of care, in spite of the fact that Jack Hinton and Harry Lorrequer and Tom Burke - all chips off the same block - seem rather more puppet-like than they did twenty years ago. The improvement in taste and the higher demands made on the construction power of the romance of to-day are shown by the modern view of his ‘Maurice Tierney and Gerald Fitzgerald. They seem thin and tired at times; but, even as they are, there has been so far no story of Irish chivalry that at all approaches Lever’s romances - even taking Gerald Fitzgerald which he evidently regarded as his weakest, as a standard. And yet no period in which Irishmen held a conspicuous place offers more alluring opportunities to the man of creative imagination than the years following ‘the flight of the wild geese’. With James II and Louis XVI, Sarsfield and the Duke of Berwick and all the glittering groups of fighting exiles, from the period of the Sun Monarch to that of the Sea-Green Marat what vistas of romance there are! Gerald Fitzgerald brings us down to the time of Louis XVI, Mirabeau and the figures that moved about him appear; this romance has not the verve and [336] the swing of the earlier books yet, from the point of view of the literary critic, it is constructively and in style much better than many historical romances which are more read to-day; but Lever did not like it, and, in spite of the unusual pains he took in writing it, he did not wish to include it in the collected edition of his works. [...]’ (p.353; see preceding remarks under Samuel Lover, infra; for full text of this essay, RICORSO Library, “Criticism ”, via index, or direct.)

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George Moore called Lever’s method ‘a sort of restaurant gravy that makes everything taste the same.’ (Hail and Fairwell, q.p.).

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Stephen Gwynn, ‘Lever does not get his due from criticism at present, but he has been at least equalled by the two ladies Edith Somerville and Martin Ross, who carried on his tradition.’ (Ireland, London: Ernest Benn 1924, p.120).

Stephen Gwynn, Irish Literature and Drama (1936), ‘Charles Lever was Irish only as Swift was, that is to say, he was born and bred in Ireland, but born of English parents. His father was a building contractor [for] the Custom House (p.75)’ Writes further of ‘W. H. Maxwell, a sporting clergyman’ (p.76) and his friendshiip with Lever, and further tells of ‘a shy child [who] used to creep into the room when he heard that [Dr Lever] was there, telling story after story.’ (p.76.) Note also: ‘Lever’s name not disclosed till Jack Hinton, by which time he accepted editorship of the Dublin Univ. Magazine with a handsome income […] house in Templeogue […] profuse hospitality.’ (p.78).

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George Birmingham, ‘Introduction’, Recollections of Jonah Barrington (Dublin: Talbot Press; London: Fisher Unwin [1918]): ‘The Ireland of Charles Lever … Until just the other day this was the only Ireland which Englishmen knew. It is still an Ireland which all Englishmen love, pity, and scorn; which Irish patriots of the sterner sort scorn without pity, but in their inmost hearts must love a little too. It is an Ireland of gay irresponsibility, of heavy drinking and good fellowship, of sport and sympathy with the sporting side of lawlessness, of nimble wit and frivolous love-making, of courage, honour, hard fighting and hard riding, of poverty turned into a jest, Its story is a tragedy in which the actors cut capers and turn somersaults, lest they should be discovered in the high heroic mood or moved to despicable tears. / Englishmen saw the capers and rejoiced in them. Irishmen of the sterner kind saw the same capers and resented them. For the Englishman we Irish were cast for the part of the clown in the circus of the world. Others, Germans, Frenchmen, the English themselves, took all the finer parts […]. [G. B. Shaw] slew Tim Haffigan with the sharp sword of his wit; but the literary tradition of the gay Irishman survives. / Not only the world outside, the world of Englishmen but we ourselves still recognise in Charles O’Malley, in Frank Webber, Mickey Free, and Baby Blake, true children of our race; remembering them when we are tempted to prance, high-stepping into the grandiose or to shout aloud, ‘The West’s awake, the west’s awake! / Sing Oh! hurrah! let England quake!’ / Father O’Flynn remains for the world the typical Irish priest, though he bears little resemblance to the fighting curates of the Land League days, and hardly more to John Banim’s sentimentalised “Soggarth Aroon.” Miss Somerville and Miss Ross are true followers of the Lever tradition, but Flurry Knox and old Mrs. Knox, of Aussolas, and Bobbie Bennett, are genuine Irish; and there is not one of us who does not recognise Slipper as near kin to some friend of our own. / The fact is, that in spite of the protests, in spite of the ignorant caricatures which have well deserved the title of “Stage Irishman,” this type which Lever popularised is an authentic presentation of what we are. It corresponds to a reality; comes, perhaps, nearer to common Irish life than anything yet given us by poets, rhetoricians, or politicians. And those who look deepest see that the writers who present these Irishmen of the Lever tradition are themselves something more than buffoons. They laugh, and we laugh at or with them; but we know that they laugh with deliberate intention, because the [?real] motive to laughter in their case is tears. They clown, because if they did not there would be nothing for them except to sit down and wring their hands helplessly. Under all the noisy capering and rattling wit of these Lever Irishmen, there sounds a note, almost always audible to anyone with an car for literature, of sorrowful tenderness. The works of these authors is the literature of men with thoughts perhaps too deep, certainly too intimately private for mere tears. [… &c.]

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Constantia Maxwell, ‘William Makepeace Thackeray, The Cockney Traveller, 1842’, in Strangers in Ireland (1954), Chap. XXIII, pp.296-314, notes that ‘Thackeray dedicated The Irish Sketch Book [published 3 May 1843] to the Irish novelist Charles Lever, with whom he had made friends in the summer of 1842 and in whose house nr. Dublin he had written most of the book. Thackeray was still comparatively unknown … the next month it was reviewed by Lever in his journal [Dublin University Magazine].’ Quotes: ‘that any Englishman, without long and intimate acquaintance with Ireland, the result of residence in the country, and constant habits of intercourse with all classes of the population, could write a valuable book, and one which might be deemed an authority, we hold altogether impossible.’ [See further under Thackeray, Commentary, infra.]

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Thomas Flanagan, The Irish Novelists 1800-1850 (Columbia UP 1959): ‘[...] I have not considered the work of Lover and Lever, whose names, inevitably and indecently yoked, are the first to occur to many readers. In neither writer is there any real tension or any sense of felt experience. It is not true, though many nationalist critics have made the claim, that Lever was engaged in the task of deliberately travestying his countrymen. His novels, nonetheless, are travesties, because they are not written out of any deep concern with his subject - but this is true of all poor novels. At times, as in The Martins of Cro' Martin (1847), he seems to be fumbling toward a subject which might engage his feelings, but never with complete success.’ (p.46.)

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Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, 1789-1850, Vol. 2 (1980), cites Edgar Allen Poe, ‘Essay on Charles O’Malley’, in Collected Works (1875), Vol. IV; Letters to Lever, by Charles Dickens, ed. F. V. Livingston (1933); also Life (1879, rev. 1884), by W. J. Fitzpatrick, and crit. by A. N. Jeffares. Justin McCarthy, Irish Lit., gives extracts from works incl. ‘My first Day at Trinity’. Rafroidi’s gives summary statement only on Charles Lever, who ‘specialised in depicting young Irish officers, improvident, given to gambling, pugnacious, spending their lives playing amusing and not so amusing tricks, or, in the manner of W. H. Maxwell’s characters and anticipating those of Somerville and Ross, riding and hunting.’ [33; …] Lover and Lever’s heroes are the progeny of Roderick Random, Squire Weston, Parson Adams, Partridge, and company. Further: ‘[Lever] furnishes the proof that the neo-picaresque inherited from the English could open on to a true Romanticism of adventure. That Thackeray should have ridiculed him, far from being surprising, serves only to corroborate this contention. Beside the pillar of Victorian middle-class and his worldly wise philosophising on Waterloo and the ruthless games of a refined society, the author of Charles O’Malley sets up the massive form of the pugnacious rustic squire of the by-gone Romantic age.’ (pp.38-39.) ‘The story goes that the editorship of the National Magazine was taken away from Charles Lever for having accepted, or written, an article in praise of the author of Prometheus, and that he was replaced by Philip Dixon Hardy [no source; article appears in NM, I, 285, 1830]’ (p.40). [Bibliography as in Works, supra].

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Peter Costello, The Heart Grown Brutal (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1977), comments to the effect that Lever set part of a novel of 1865 (viz., Luttrell of Arran; here unnamed) in the Aran Islands, and that he saw them with the eye of a ‘decayed romantic’, thereby missing the essentials; Costello quotes: ‘that great mountain rising abruptly from the sea … those wild fantastic rocks, with their drooping seaweeds; those solemn cages, wherein the rumbling sea rushes to issue forth again I some distant cleft.’ [q.p.]

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James Calahan, The Irish Novel: A Critical History (Boston: Twayne Publishers 1988), remarks that ‘Lever’s wild sense of humour seems out of place in a nineteenth century Ireland where nationalist piety was a weightier force than art’, and continues: ‘Yet in his life he prefigures Joyce, Flann O’Brien, Samuel Beckett […] celebrated for many of the same reasons for which Lever was condemned by Irish nationalists.’ (p.66). Note that Cahalan quotes A. N. Jeffares’ assertion that Irish critics perpetuate the label with which Carleton branded him (viz., attacks of 1843), reading ‘no further than Harry Lorrequer and Charles O’Malley. They got the wrong Lever’ (Jeffares, Anglo-Irish Literature, 1980, p.104).

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Mary Campbell, review of Charles Lever: New Evaluations, ed. Tony Bareham (1992), in Books Ireland (Nov. 1992): ‘The portrait of Charles Lever that emerges from these six essays shows a very complex, deeply divided man, with a sense of exile and alienation, and its seems that in his later novels, away from the reckless, open-handed daredevils of the early work, these characteristics were worked out. I am now persuaded to leave the reading of the once widely popular Charles O’Malley for the time being, and on the recommendation of these new evaluations to have a look at the neglected Lord Kilgobbin.’ Campbell mentions Davis’s and Duffy’s attack on Lever, and quotes Carleton’s comment on his ‘selling us for pounds, shillings, and pence’ [as supra] in his contemptuous dismissal of the rollicking novels, Harry Lorrequer and Charles O’Malley [Nation, 7 Oct. 1843]. In 1888, Yeats reactivated this Irish hostility and accused him of every writing with one eye on London [as supra]; Yeats argued that because he never wrote for the people he never wrote faithfully of the people; as the nationalist canon became more narrowly defined, Lever’s exclusion became complete. [Books Ireland, Nov. 1992.]

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John Sutherland, ‘Lever’s Columns: a novelist who contributed to great fiction without becoming great’, in Times Literary Supplement ( 15 Dec. 2007 ), p.14: ‘[…] Two distinct ways of writing about war emerged from the quarrel. On the one side was the eyewitness technique which dealt with Waterloo directly. On the other was the Thackerayan sidestep: or, as he puts it in Vanity Fair: “We do not claim to rank among the military novelists. Our place is with the non-combatants. When the decks are cleared for action we go below and wait meekly”. Nevertheless, Thackeray could write well about fighting, as can be seen in chapters four to six of Barry Lyndon, which he was writing virtually up to the month he began Vanity Fair. His decision not to describe the Battle of Waterloo in the latter work was an aesthetic choice.’ Further, having argued that Tolstoy’s way of dealing with the battle-scenes of War and Peace follows Thackeray’s prescription rather than Lever’s: ‘Influence is a clumsy analytical tool. Very often in nineteenth-century fiction we seem to overhear a sort of subdued conversation between novelists. Progressing from Charles O’Malley, to Vanity Fair, to War and Peace, the reader can pick up some disagreeable exchanges between Lever and Thackeray before finding agreement between Thackeray and Tolstoy over how to treat the big battle scenes at the centres of their narratives. There is other talk (between Thackeray, Dickens and Tolstoy, for example). But Lever, one would like to think, was a participant in this great fictional conversation. This year seems the right time to acknowledge his presence. A novelist may make a contribution to great fiction without himself being great.’ [End; see full text in Ricorso Library, “Criticism”, via index or direct; and see also Sutherland, under “References”, infra.]

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Margaret Kelleher, ‘Prose Writing and Drama in English; 1830-1890 […]’, in Cambridge History of Irish Literature, ed. Kelleher & Philip O’Leary (Cambridge UP 2006), Vol. 1 [Chap. 11]: ‘Reading England, writing Ireland: Lever, Le Fanu and Riddell’, sect.]: ‘The career of Charles Lever (1806-72) […] offers valuable insights into the emergence of the professional Irish novelist in the mid-nineteenth century. […] The first instalment of his Confessions of Harry Lorrequer appeared in the DUM in February 1837, and single-volume publication - by Dublin firm [466] Curry - followed in 1839. The novel, described by Lever himself as a ‘volume of anecdote and adventure’, and comprising a series of loosely connected episodes, is an Irish Tom Jones, its picaresque series of adventures ranging from Dublin to England, France and Germany, and featuring duels, elopements, mistaken identities and a Falstaffian comic creation in the character of Arthur O’Leary. […] The military novel, with which Lever is most frequently associated, had already become popular through the work of his friend William Maxwell […] The popularity of Lever’s second novel, Charles O’Malley, the Irish Dragoon (1841), written during his years in Brussels, consolidated his reputation as “Harry Rollicker” […] Their commercial popularity also earned Lever the title of “Dr Quicksilver”, and in October 1843 William Carleton authored a deeply critical, unsigned review in The Nation in which he accused Lever of ‘selling us for pounds, shillings, and pence’. (Nation, 17 Oct. 1843). […]’ [Cont.]

Margaret Kelleher, ‘Prose Writing and Drama in English; 1830-1890 […]’, in Cambridge History of Irish Literature (2006), Vol. 1 - cont.: In 1842 Lever […] became editor of the Dublin University Magazine […] and succeeded, partly through the serial publication of his own novels such as Jack Hinton (1842) and Loiterings of Arthur O’Leary (1843), in raising circulation of the magazine to a peak of 4,000 copies a month. / In the novels of this period, Lever delivers a bitter critique of the contemporary Castle administration and viceregal court, often, as in Jack Hinton, through the familiar “stranger-to-Ireland” plot. In Tom Burke of “Ours” (1844), a fourteen-year-old orphan witnesses savage reprisals by the yeomanry in the post-1798 period, and as, in the words of one critic, ‘the first young man in Lever to be serious’ (Tony Bareham, ‘Introduction’ to Bareham, ed., Charles Lever: New Evaluations, Colin Smythe 1991, p.9), is exiled to France where he joins the armies of Napoleon.’ (pp.466-67.) [Cont.]

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Margaret Kelleher, ‘Prose Writing and Drama in English; 1830-1890 […]’, in Cambridge History of Irish Literature (2006), Vol. 1 - cont.: ‘[…] Although criticised during his own lifetime and since for the degree of stereotype inherent within his ‘rollicking’ characters – what his contemporary Trollope termed ‘rattling, jolly, joyous, swearing Irishmen’ – Lever’s early novels achieved a large commercial success, and what Tony Bareham {468} has called ‘the intelligent internationalism’ of Lever’s later writing earned him conspicuously less financial reward. Carleton’s early jibe would be long-lasting in appraisals of his work, reinforced by the negative view of Yeats who wrote of Lever that, like his contemporary Samuel Lover, he ‘wrote ever with one eye on London’. The counter-argument made by critic A. Norman Jeffares that Yeats and others ‘got hold of the wrong Lever’ has some persuasive power, and all too often comments on Lever’s work are based only on a cursory knowledge of one or two of his early novels, and the significant changes and variations within his career are obscured. Lever’s self-assessment may come closest to capturing both his abilities and limitations: All I have attempted – all I have striven to accomplish’, he wrote in 1857, ‘is the faithful portraiture of character, the close analysis of motives, and correct observation as to some of the manners and modes of thought which mark the age we live in.’ (preface to The Fortunes of Glencore (1857; cited in Bareham, op. cit., pp.11-12.) [For full text of this chapter, go to RICORSO, Library, Criticism, via index or direct.]

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Quotations
Harry Lorrequer (1839), Preface [rep. in 1905 edn., p.xi-xviii]: ‘When the great master of fiction [Sir Walter Scott] condescended to inform the world on what small fragments of tradition or local anecdote the Waverley Novels were founded, he best exalted the marvellous skill of his own handiwork in showing how genius could develop the veriest incident of a life into a story of surpassing power and interest. I have no such secrets to reveal, nor have I the faintest pretension to suppose the public would care to hear about the sources from which I drew either my characters or my incidents. I have seen, however, such references to supposed portraiture of individuals in this story, that I am forced to declare there is but one character in the book of which the original had any existence, and to which I contributed nothing of exaggeration. This is Father Malachi Brennan. The pleasant priest was alive when I wrote the tale, and saw himself in print, and - worse still - in picture, not, I believe, without a certain mock indignation, for he was too racy a humorist, and too genuine a lover of fun, to be really angry at this caricature of him. / The amusing author of The Wild Sports of the West - Hamilton Maxwell - was my neighbour in the little water-place where I was living, and our intimacy was not the less close from the graver character of the society around us. We often exchanged our experiences of Irish character and life, and in our gossipings stories were told, added to, and amplified in such a way between us that I believe neither of us could have pronounced at last who gave the initiative of an incident, or on which side lay the authorship of a particular event./It would have been well if our intercourse stopped with these confidences, but, unfortunately, it did not. We often indulged in little practical jokes on our more well-conducted neighbours, and I remembers that the old soldier from whom I drew some of the features I have given to Colonel Kamworth was especially a mark of these harmless pleasantries [aka ‘small persecutions’ and ‘wrong intelligence’] [xiii …; cont.]

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Harry Lorrequer (1839) - Preface [cont.]: ‘If there are many faults and blunders in this tale which I would willingly correct, if there be much that I would curtail or cut out altogether, and if there be also occasionally incidents of which I could improve the telling, I am held back from any attempts of this kind by the thought that it was by these sketches, such as they are, I first won the hearing from the public which for more than thirty years has never deserted me, and that the favour which has given the chief pride and interest of to my life dates from the day I was known as Harry Lorrequer. Having given up the profession for which, I believe, I had some aptitude, to follow the precarious life of a writer, I suppose I am only admitting what many others under like circumstances might declare, that I have had my moments, of doubt and misgiving that I made the wiser choice, and bating the intense pleasure an occasional success has afforded, I have been led to think that the career I had abandoned would have been more rewarding, more safe from reverses, and less exposed to those variations of public taste which are the terrors of all who live on the world and favour. [xiv; cont.]

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Harry Lorrequer (1839) - Preface [cont.]: ‘…No small satisfaction has it been to me occasionally to hear that out of the over-abundance of my own buoyancy and lightheartedness - and I had a great deal of both long ago—I have been able to share with my neighbour and given him part of my sunshine, and only felt the warmer myself. A great writer—one of the most eloquent historians who ever illustrated the military achievements of his country—once told me that, as he lay sick and careworn after a fever, it was in my reckless stories of soldier life that he found the cheeriest moments of his solitude; and now let me hasten to say that I tell this in no spirit of boastfulness but with the heart-felt gratitude of one who has gained more by hearing that confession than Harry Lorrequer ever acquired by all his own. / One word now as regards the task I am immediately engaged in, and I have done. / My publishers propose to bring out in this edition a carefully revised version of all my books in the order in which they were written, each story to be accompanied by some brief notice explaining the circumstances under which it was written, and to what extent fact or fiction had their share in the construction. / If such notices may occasionally be but leaves of an autobiography, I must ask my reader to pardon me, and to believe at shall not impose my egotism upon him when it is possible to avoid it, while at the same time he shall know all that I myself know of the history of these volumes.’ (pp.xiii-vi.)

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Jack Hinton, The Guardsman (1843): ‘Don’t tell me of yor insurrection acts, of your nightly outrages, your outbreaks, and your burnings, as a reason for keeping a large military force in Ireland - nothing of the kind. A very different object, indeed, is the reason - Ireland [9] is garrisoned to please the ladies.’ ( London 1897 Edn., p.266; quoted in W. J. McCormack, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland, 1991 Edn., pp.9-10.)

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Jack Hinton, The Guardsman (1843) - ‘To Miss Edgeworth’ [Dedicatory letter]: ‘MADAM, This weak attempt to depict the military life of France, during the brief but glorious period of the empire, I beg to dedicate to you. Had the scene of this, like that of my former books, been laid chiefly in Ireland, I should have felt too sensibly my own inferiority, to venture on the presumption of such a step. As it is, I never was more eonscious of the demerits of my volume than when inscribing it to you; but I cannot resist the temptation of being, even thus, associated with a name, the first in my country’s literature. / Another motive I will not conceal - the ardent desire I have to assure you, that, amid the thousands you have made better, and wiser, and happier, by your writings, you cannot count one who feels more proudly the common tie of country with you, nor more sincerely admires your goodness, and your genius, than / Your devoted and obedient servant, CHARLES J. LEVER. [signed:] Temple-Ogue, November 25, 1844. [Cont.]

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Tom Burke of “Ours” (London: Dicks [1844]): “A PARTING WORD”: ‘[… The] moral of my tale is simple. The fatal influence of crude and uncertain notions of liberty will exercise over a career, which under happier direction of its energies, had won honour and distinction, and the impolicy of the effort to substitute an adopted for a natural allegiance. / My estimate of Napoleon may seem to some to partake of exaggeration; but I have carefully distinguished between the Hero and the Emperor, and have not suffered my unqualified admiration of the one, to carry me on to any blind devotion to the other. / Having begins this catalogue of excuses and explanations, I know not where to stop, so once more asking forgiveness for all the errors of these volumes, I beg to subscribe myself [… &c.]’; signed Templeogue House, 25 Aug. 1844.]

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Tom Burke of “Ours” (London: Dicks [1844]) - cont. [Darby-the-Blast:] ‘My notion is that the poor man that has neither fine houses nor fine clothes nor servants to amuse him, that Providence is kind to him in another way and fills his mind with all manner of droll thoughts and queer stories and bits of songs and the like. The quality has [n]e’er a bit of fun in them at all, but does be always coming to us for something to make them laugh.’ (Quoted in G. C. Duggan, The Stage Irishman, 1937). Note: the same passage is quoted in Rafroidi, 1980, Vol. 1, and therein called there an instance of the ‘laughter of compensation or revenge’; also in part in Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 1995, p.73, citing the Dublin Edn. 1844, p.71.)

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The O’Donoghue (1845) - Chap. XLIV [the End]: ‘The storm of that eventful night is treasured among the memories of the peasantry of the south. None living had ever witnessed a gale of such violence--none since have seen a hurricane so dreadful and enduring : for miles along the coast the scattered spars and massive timbers told of shipwreck and disasters, while inland, uptorn trees and fallen rocks attested its power. / The old castle of Carrig-na-curra did not escape the general calamity; the massive walls that had resisted for centuries the assaults of war and time, were shaken to their foundations, and one strong, square tower, the ancient keep, was rent by lightning from the battlements to the base, while far and near might be seen fragments of timber, and even of masonry, hurled from their places by the storm. For whole days after the gale abated, the air resounded with an unceasing din - the sound of the distant sea, and the roar of the mountain torrents, as swollen and impetuous they tore along. / The devastation thus wide spread, seemed not to have been limited to the mere material world, but to have extended its traces over man: the hurricane was recognized as the interposition of heaven, and the disaster of the French fleet looked on as the vengeance of the Almighty. It did not need the superstitious character of the southern peasants’ mind to induce this belief: the circumstances in all their detail were too strongly corroborative, not to enforce conviction on sterner imaginations; and, the very escape of the French ships from every portion of our channel fleet, which at first was deemed a favour of fortune, was now regarded as pointing out the more signal vengeance of Heaven. Dismay and terror were depicted in every face; the awful signs of the gale which were seen on every side suggested gloom and dread, and each speculated how far the anger of God might fall upon a guilty nation. / There is no reason to doubt the fact, that whatever the ultimate issue of the struggle, the immediate fate of the country was decided on that night. Had the French fleet arrived in full force, and landed the troops, there was neither preparation for resistance, nor means of defence, undertaken by the Government.’ (Curry edn. of 1845, p.403.) [See remarks of Seán Ó Tuama on the historical O’Donoghues, infra.]

Roland Cashel (1850) - reissued in 1858 with a new preface dated October 1858, explaining how the story was written ‘from the life ... after nature’ as a response to the criticism of the ‘endless scenes of recklessness - wild orgies of dissipation’ which marked his earlier novels. (See Richard Beaton, infra.)

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Depredation of Connaught: ‘The genius of the rest of Ireland […] uses Connaught as a species of literary store-farm. Ulster, Leinster, and Munster, breed men of genius who, so soon as they have exhausted their own provinces of lay and legend, incontinently cross the Shannon to carry on a predatory warfare against Fin Varra and Grana Uaile. These they rob and pillage without mercy; driving preys of ghost stories, and taking black mail of songs and tunes as unceremoniously as ever the Finns of old lifted sheep and black cattle. Meanwhile, the Connasians go on coshering, and story telling, and droning on their bagpipes; fighting, joking, ghost-seeing; acting comedies and romances every day; but never dreaming of taking pen in hand to turn themselves to account; and again, you might as well attempt to eat down a corcass meadow as to exhaust this El Dorado of material, by transporting into it any given number of tourists, statists, legend-hunters, whim-catchers, trait-trappers, and historians.’ (Quoted in W. J. Fitzpatrick, The Life of Charles Lever, London 1884, p.175; cited in Patrick Sheeran, “The Novels of Liam O’Flaherty: A Study in Romantic Realism”, Ph.D. Diss., UCG 1972, p.177; but note that the passage is also quoted [up to ‘… account’] in Rolf Loeber & Magda Loeber, A Guide to Irish Fiction, 1650-1900, Dublin: Four Courts Press 2006 [Intro.], p.li, where it is attributed to a Major Darcy writing in the West of Ireland in 1839, being quoted similarly from Fitzgerald, Life of Charles Lever, London, new edn., p.175.)

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References
Dictionary of National Biography, calls Harry Lorrequer and Charles O’Malley both artless and formless, showing influence of W. H. Maxwell; probably due to the inspiration of the shrewd manager of the Dublin University Magazine, McGlashan; Thackeray’s The Irish Sketch Book dedicated to Lever; Lever advised by Thackeray in 1842-43 to avoid literary tendency to extravagance, and to quit Dublin for London; as a portrayer of Irish character greatly overrated; his aboriginal Irishmen generally of lower class; his heroes and heroines almost invariably English or Anglo-Norman; done much to perpetuate common errors as to the Irish character; not that the type he depicts is unreal but it is far from universal or even general; positively unpopular with Irishmen of strong national feeling who accuse him of lowering the national character. Bibl. incl. ‘Youth of Charles Lever’ by a kinsman, Dublin Univ. Magazine, 1880, pp.465, 570; novels reviewed in Blackwood’s, Aug. 1862; Saintsbury’s assessment appeared in Fortnight Review, Vol. XXXII. [Note: ODNB contains no references to the parody of Lever by Thackeray or vice versa, but see under Thackeray, q.v.]

Irish Literature, gen. ed. Justin McCarthy (NY: Collier & Son [1904]), contains extracts from Lever incl. "the Monks of the Screw" and "Major Bob Mahon's Hospitality", from Jack Hinton; "A Dinner Party Broken Up" and "the Hunt", from Charles O'Malley; "Othello at Drill", from Harry Lorrequer; "My first Day at Trinity" and "My Last Night at Trinity", from Tales of Trinity College, as well as poems "The Widow Malone", "Larry M'Hale", and "The Pope he Leads a Happy Life", (pp.1943-2002) - [online].

Irish Literature, gen. ed. Justin McCarthy (NY: Collier & Son [1904]), Sect. II - Vols. 1-10: Works of Charles Lever - available at Internet Archive - digitised from copies held in University of Toronto originally owned by T. E. Ball. Vol. I: The Knight of Gwynne [online].

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Arthur Quiller Couch, ed., Oxford Book of English Prose (1925), contains ‘The Galway Hunt’, an excerpt from An extract of Charles O’Malley.

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John Cooke, ed., The Dublin Book of Irish Verse (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1909), selects “Widow Malone”; “Larry M’Hale”; “The Man for Galway” [‘With debts galore, but fun far more;/Oh, that’s the man for Galway’].

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Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction [Pt. I] (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), contains a lengthy notice, quoting Krans (Irish Life in Irish Fiction, 1903) and W. J. Fitzpatrick, Lever’s biographer. The former attests that ‘his imagination did not enable him to see with the eyes of the Catholic gentry or the peasantry. He knew only one class of peasants well - servants and retainers, and he only knew them in the side turned out to their masters. Most of his peasants are more than half stage-Irishmen.’ The latter avers that his genius was more French than English. Brown concedes that ‘his books give a wonderful series of pictures of Irish life from the days of Grattan’s Parliament to the Famine of 1846’, though ‘many of these pictures […] create a false impression by directing the eye almost exclusively to what is grotesque and whimsical.’ Brown directs attention to bibl. articles in Blackwood[‘s Magazine, April 1862, and in Dublin Review, Vol. 70 (1872), p.379; also to Edmund Downey, Charles Lever, His Life and Letters [2 vols. (London: Blackwood 1906)]. IF1 lists, Complete Novels, ed. by the novelist’s daughter in 37 vols. (Downey 1897-99), with engravings and etchings by Phiz and Cruikshank, and ills. by Luke Fildes et al., all proper to original editions; annotated from unpublished memoranda, with Lever’s prefaces and bibliographical notes to each story. Descriptions: Harry Lorrequer [1839], first of the rollicking military novels; Charles O’Malley [1841], electioneering, hunting, and duelling of Galway gentry; Jack Hinton [1843], adventures of young English officer arriving in Ireland during viceroyalty of Grafton; Tom Burke of “Ours” [1844], Irish soldier in France army, encounters the First Consul, Napoleon; Arthur O’Leary [1844], stories-novel of student days, in Canada and Germany; St. Patrick’s Eve [1845] faction fighting and famine near Lough Corrib, ‘when I wrote it, I desired to inculcate the truth that prosperity has as many duties as adversity has sorrows’; The O’Donoghue [1845], decaying Catholic gentry, son involved in abortive Bantry Bay invasion; romance with daughter of English landlord, and final harmony; Lanty Lawler, the comic relief; accused of Repeal tendencies; The Martins of Cro’Martin [1856], tenants of Ballynahinch Castle, abandoned by imperious landlord to mercies of ruthless agent; The Knight of Glynne [1847], ways and means adopted to pass act of Union; Roland Cashel [1850], harm-scarum young Irish soldier of fortune and, fortunately Irish heir, mixed up with Columbina adventurer’s daughter, in Americas and Ireland; The Daltons, or Three Roads in Life [1852], absentee landlord, Peter Dalton, in Germany, Austria, and Italy, c.1848; Maurice Tiernay [1852], a young Jacobite in exile [wild goose]; Con Cregan [1854], ‘the Irish Gil Blas’ (acc. Lever) ; Sir Jasper Carew [1855]; The Fortune of Glencore [1857]; Davenport Dunn [1859], based on John Sadlier and Judge Keogh]; One of Them (1861); Barrington [1862]; A Day’s Ride [1863]; The Dodd Family Abroad [1863-65], continental travels of Anglo-Irish family, told in letters, filled with preposterous false ideas; Luttrell of Arran [1865], Sir Gervais Vyner tries to make a fine lady of a beautiful peasant but she meets the Luttrells of Aran, and romance ensues; Tony Butler [1865] Tony, from the North of Ireland, gets a post in the diplomatic service; Sir Brooke Fosbrooke [1866], a Dublin mess-room comedy; The Branleighs of Bishop’s Folly [1868], set in Coleraine and Italy, having to do with the local aristocratic family, Culduff, and an English banker with mining plans; Lord Kilgobbin [1872], social and political conditions c.1865, almost nationalist sympathies, portraying Daniel Donogan, Fenian Head-Centre and TCD student, while the title-character is Matthew Kearney, a broken-down Catholic gentleman; Gerald Fitzgerald [1899], hero a legitimate son of the Pretender, offspring of a secret marriage; Con O’Kelly [Duffy n.d.], a reprint from Arthur O’Leary. IF also cites (with only some dates) A Rent in a Cloud; That Boy of Norcott’s; Paul Goslett’s Confessions; Nuts and Nutcrackers [1845]; Tales of the Trains [1845]; Horace Templeton; Cornelius O’Dowd [1873].

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John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988; rep. 1989), lists Arthur O’Leary, ser. Dublin University Magazine, Jan.-Dec. 1843; 3 vols. ill. G. Cruikshank; comic adventures of Pickwickian Irish gentleman. Also Harry Lorrequer, of which Lever later recorded, ‘I wrote as I felt, sometimes in good spirits, sometimes bad, always carelessly’; serialised irregularly in Dublin University Magazine. Also Davenport Dunn (1859), based on the case of John Sadleir [see infra], swindler and suicide; Lever handles the enigmatic character of his majestic criminal hero effectively. Also Jack Hinton the Guardsman (1843; ser. Bentley’s Misc., Jan.-Feb. 1842); rollicks like Lorrequer, a visitor to Ireland; includes Dublin snobs, Mr and Mrs Paul Rooney, the Irish priest Tom Loftus, and Tipperary Joe; last scenes set in Spain, France, and Italy. ‘St Patrick’s Eve’ (1845), for Christmas Book of Chapman and Hall, is the grimmest story he wrote, a gloomy picture of small farmers starving in 1832; when Dickens serialised his quixotic A Day’s Ride, the sales of All the Year Round plummeted, causing Dickens’s to weigh in with Great Expectations to restore circulation. Barrington (1863), a comedy of middle-class life in Co. Kilkenny; ‘in general the author has been undervalued by English readers as a lightweight comedian and by the Irish as a traducer of the national image.’ Sutherland also lists Maurice Tiernay, ser. Dublin University Magazine April 1850-Dec. 1851; Irish boy brought up in France during the Terror; his father guillotined, and himself rescued by Robespierre, becomes camp follower and soldiers as a hussar in Germany, and then in Ireland organises the Free Irish Army to resist the British; then rises to rank of colonel under Massena and, favoured by Napoleon, marries aristocratic bride, ending “one of the richest and happiest among the Soldiers of Fortune”; shrewd analysis of French revolutionary politics; not successful. Charitably appointed consul at Trieste by British Govt. (See also Sutherland, ‘Lever’s Columns’, in in Times Literary Supplement, 15 Dec. 2007), as supra.)

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Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1, selects Jack Hinton, The Guardsman [1243-48; 1255-65]; 1175, 1176, 1268; 1299, BIOG, [Lever] fell foul of the increasingly articulate cultural nationalism of The Nation and left Ireland for Italy. British consul at Spezzia and Trieste, after 1867. Notes that the charge of plagiarism advanced by Charles Gavan Duffy [in the article printed in FDA, Vol. 1, viz., ‘Mr Lever’s “Irish” Novels’, pp.1255-65] has been augmented by John Hemming in ‘Charles Lever and Rodolphe Toepffer,’ in Mod. Lang. Review (1948), pp.88-92; biographers aver that Lever was deeply wounded by the criticism and persuaded by it to quit Ireland, 1255. Also, FDA2, counted among members of Irish gothic tradition [which does not amount to a tradition, W. J. McCormack, ed.], 837; incorporated into Dublin society through the medical profession [ibid.], 838; incorporated self-contained tales within his novels, 840-42; classed as Anglo-Irish by MacDonagh (1916), 990; Do., Daniel Corkery (1931), 1011; [ed. essay, Augustine Martin, 1022]. FDA3, subject to exclusionary orders in critical writings of Corkery, 562; [W. J. McCormack, to move from a discussion of Charles Lever to the work of Joyce or from a discussion of early Irish lyrics to the poetry of Yeats, is to cross seismic lines of demarcation, 665.

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Libraries & Booksellers
British Library holds [1] The Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly. A novel. 183pp. Harper & Bros: New York, 1868. 8o. [2] Dr. W. H. Russell, of London, Consul Lever, of Trieste, and Cook’s Tourists. Letters to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and to the Right Honourable the Earl of Clarendon, Foreign Secretary of State: in reply to various misstatements and calumnies contained in “A Diary in the East,” by W. H. Russell, LL.D.; and to certain papers by “Cornelius O’Dowd”-Charles Lever … in “Blackwoods’ Magazine.” By Thomas Cook … and numerous Eastern and Continental tourists. 64pp. Cook’s Tourist & Publication Office: London, 1870. 8o. [3] Charles Lever: his life in his letters … With portraits. 2 vol. William Blackwood & Sons: Edinburgh & London, 1906. 8o. [4] [A Day’s Ride.] De Avonturen van Algernon Sydney Potts … Vertaald door J. Kuijlman, &c. xii, 459pp. Amsterdam, [1913.] 8o. [5] A Day’s Ride: a life’s romance. [Another edition.] With illustrations. 2 vol. 1864. London, [1878.] 8o. [6] A Rent in a Cloud and St. Patrick’s Eve … New edition. London, [1871.] 8o. [7] Adventures of Charles O’Malley. [Abridged.] 317pp. Mellifont Press: London; Dublin printed, [1947.] 8o. [8] Adventures of Harry Lorrequer, &c. [An abridgment.] 112pp. Parkside Press: Dublin, [1945.] 8o. [9] Arthur O’Leary … Illustrated by G. Cruikshank. 499pp. Routledge and Sons: London, [1892.] 8o. [10] Arthur O’Leary … With 10 illustrations by George Cruikshank. xix, 388pp. Macmillan & Co.: London, 1906. 8o. [11] Arthur O’Leary, his wanderings and ponderings in many lands. [By C. J. L.] [Another edition.] The Adventures of Arthur O’Leary. [Another edition.] With illustrations. [By George Cruickshank.] [Another edition.] London, 1856. 8o. London, [1877.] 8o. 191pp. G. Routledge & Sons: London, 1886. 8o. [12] Aventures d’Harry Lorrequer, roman traduit par A. Baudéan. 2 tom. Paris, 1859 [1858]. 8o. [13] Barrington … With illustrations by Phiz. [Another edition.] With illustrations. London: Chapman & Hall, 1863. vi, 410pp. plates. 22 cm. London, [1877.] 8o. [14] Barrington … With illustrations by Phiz (H. K. Browne). [Another copy.] Barrington, &c. London: Chapman & Hall, 1863 [1862, 63]. 411pp. plates. 23 cm. 1863 [1862, 63]. [15] Barrington. [Illustrated by H. K. Browne.] 2 vol. 1863. [16] Charles O’Malley … illustrated by “Phiz.”. 2 vol. [1912.] [17] Charles O’Malley … Illustrated by Lawson Wood. 848pp. Collins’ Clear-Type Press: London & Glasgow, [1906.] 8o. [18] Charles O’Malley … With … illustrations by A. Rackham. viii. 628pp. Service & Paton: London, 1897. 8o. [19] Charles O’Malley … With illustrations by Phiz [i.e. H. K. Browne]. G. Routledge & Sons: London; Cambridge, U.S.A. [printed, 1892]. 8o. [20] Charles O’Malley … With 44 illustrations by H. K. Browne (‘Phiz.’). 767pp. Macmillan & Co.: London, 1905. 8o. [21] Charles O’Malley, &c. 599pp. 1909. [22] Charles O’Malley, &c. vi, 969pp. 1903. [23] Charles O’Malley, &c. [With illustrations.] 446pp. R. E. King: London, [1893.] 8o. [24] Charles O’Malley, the Irish Dragoon. Edited by Harry Lorrequer. [By C. J. L.] [Another edition.] [Another edition.] Charles O’Malley, the Irish Dragoon, &c. With illustrations by H. K. Browne. [Another edition.] With illustrations. [Another edition.] [With illustrations by H. K. Browne.] [Another edition.] [Another edition.] [Another edition.] 3 vol. 1848. 2 vol. London, 1857. 8o. 2 vol. London, [1876.] 8o. [Ward, Lock & Co.: London,] Perth [printed, 1879]. 8o. 632pp. G. Routledge and Sons: London, [1884.] 8o. 256pp. G. Routledge and Sons: London, 1884. 8o. 446pp. [1888.] [25] Con O’Kelly. “The Smuggler’s Story.” [From “Arthur O’Leary.”]. 208pp. J. Duffy & Co.: Dublin, 1904. 8o. [26] Confessions of Con Cregan. [By C. J. L.] [Another edition.] [Another edition.] With illustrations. 2 vol. 1860. London, [1876.] 8o. [27] Cornelius O’Dowd upon Men and Women and other things in general. [By C. J. L.] 1874. 8o. [28] Davenport Dunn: or, the Man of the Day. With illustrations by Phiz [i.e. H. K. Browne]. [Another edition.] Davenport Dunn. [Another edition.] With illustrations. London, [1857-59.] 8o. 3 vol. 1859. 2 vol. London, [1877.] 8o. [29] Gerald Fitzgerald the Chevalier. A novel. viii, 408pp. Downey & Co.: London, 1899. 8o. [30] Harry Lorrequer. viii, 530pp. London, [1937.] 8o. [31] Harry Lorrequer. xi, 404pp. Dean & Son: London, [1903.] 8o. [32] Harry Lorrequer … New edition, with autobiographical introduction. 8, 400pp. Ward, Lock & Co.: London, New York, [c. 1885.] 8o. [33] Harry Lorrequer … With illustrations by Phiz [i.e. H. K. Browne]. 2 vol. G. Routledge & Sons: London; Cambridge, U.S.A. [printed, 1892]. 8o. [34] Harry Lorrequer … With 22 illustrations by “Phiz.” New edition. [Another edition.] With illustrations. [Another edition.] The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer. [Another copy.] [Another edition.] [Another edition.] [Another copy.] viii, 344pp. Chapman & Hall: London, 1872. 8o. London, [1876.] 8o. vi, 152pp. Routledge and Son: London, 1882. 8o. 170pp. J. Dicks: London, [1883.] 8o. 383pp. Cassell & Co.: London, [1884.] 8o. [35] Harry Lorrequer. [An abridgement.] 251pp. Readers’ Library Publishing Co.: London, [1928.] 8o. [36] Harry Lorrequer. With introduction by Lewis Melville. xx, 468pp. [1907.] [37] Horace Templeton. An autobiography. [Another edition.] With illustrations. Philadelphia, [1840?] 8o. London, [1878.] 8o. [38] Jack Hinton … With illustrations by Phiz. 2 vol. Routledge and Sons: London, [1892.] 8o. [39] Jack Hinton … With 35 illustrations by H. K. Browne. xix, 442pp. Macmillan & Co.: London, 1906 [1905]. 8o. [40] Jack Hinton, &c. viii, 540pp. 1903. Most recent acquisitions appear first. (Older reference material is in author order. BLDSC journals/serials are in title order). [41] Jack Hinton, &c. [Another edition.] Jack Hinton, &c. [With illustrations.] 189pp. Routledge and Sons: London, 1893. 8o. 389pp. R. E. King: London, [1893.] 8o. [42] Jack Hinton, the Guardsman. 389pp. W. Scott: London, [1892.] 8o. [43] Jack Hinton, the Guardsman. 389pp. Cassell & Co.: London, [1890.] 8o. [44] Jack Hinton, the Guardsman … With a portrait of the author. And numerous illustrations on wood and steel, by H. K. Browne. [Another edition.] Jack Hinton, the Guardsman. [Another edition.] With illustrations by H. K. Browne. [Another edition.] With illustrations. [Another edition.] [Another edition.] [Another edition.] x, 396pp. William Curry, Jun. & Co.: Dublin, 1845. 8o. 2 vol. 1849. London, 1857. 8o. London, [1876.] 8o. xix, 421pp. Routledge & Sons: London, 1885. 8o. 189pp. Routledge & Sons: London, 1885. 8o. 389pp. [1886.] [45] L’Homme du Jour. … Traduit [from the English of “Davenport Dunn”] … par A. Baudéan. Paris, 1861. 12o. [46] Lord Kilgobbin … With 18 illustrations by Luke Fildes. xi, 475pp. Macmillan & Co.: London, 1906. 8o. [47] Lord Kilgobbin: a tale of Ireland in our own time. [Another edition.] With illustrations. 3 vol. London, 1872. 8o. London, [1877.] 8o. [48] Luttrell of Arran. … With illustrations by “Phiz” [i.e. H. K. Browne]. [Another edition.] [Another edition.] With illustrations. London, 1865. 8o. 2 vol. 1865. London, [1877?] 8o. [49] Maurice Tiernay … By the author of “Sir Jasper Carew” [Charles James Lever]. [Another edition.] With illustrations. London, [1878.] 8o. [50] Maurice Tiernay, the soldier of fortune. 2 vol. 1861. Most recent acquisitions appear first. (Older reference material is in author order. BLDSC journals/serials are in title order). [51] Nuts and nutcrackers. [By C. J. Lever.] Illustrated by “Phiz”. Third edition. London: Chapman & Hall, 1857. viii, 232pp.: plate. 18 cm. [52] One of them. [Another edition.] With illustrations by Phiz. [Another edition.] With illustrations. 2 vol. 1860. London, 1861. 8o. London, [1877.] 8o. [53] Our mess. Edited by Charles Lever-Harry Lorrequer … With a portrait of the author and numerous illustrations on wood and steel by Phiz. 3 vol. Dublin, &c.: William Curry, Jun., & Co., &c., 1843, 44 [1842-44]. 3 vol.: plates. 8o. [54] Paul Gosslett’s Confessions, &c. 89pp. London; Vienna printed, [1924.] 16o. [55] Paul Gosslett’s Confessions in Love, Law, and the Civil Service. [By C. J. L.] [56] Roland Cashel. With illustrations by Phiz [i.e. H. K. Browne]. [Another edition.] [Another edition.] With illustrations by H. K. Browne. [Another edition.] With illustrations. London, 1850. 8o. 3 vol. 1858. 2 vol. London, 1858. 8o. 2 vol. London, [1877.] 8o. [57] Scenes from Harry Lorrequer … With biographical introduction by H. Bennett. 153pp. 1907. [58] Sir Brook Fossbrooke. Title New edition. [Another edition.] [Another edition.] With illustrations. 3 vol. William Blackwood and Sons: Edinburgh [printed] and London, 1866. 8o. 503pp. William Blackwood and Sons: Edinburgh [printed] and London, 1867. 8o. 2 vol. 1867. London, 1878. 8o. [59] Sir Jasper Carew, his life and experiences. By the Author of Maurice Tiernay, &c. [C. J. Lever.] [Another edition.] [Another edition.] With illustrations. [Another edition.] (A Rent in a Cloud, and St. Patrick’s Eve.). 480pp. [1855.] 2 vol. 1861. London, [1878.] 8o. London, [1878.] 8o. [60] St. Patrick’s Eve. Illustrated by Phiz [i.e. H. K. Browne]. London, 1845. 16o. 61] That Boy of Norcott’s. With … illustrations. London, 1869. 8o. [62] The Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly. [Another edition.] With illustrations. 3 vol. London, 1868. 8o. London, [1877.] 8o. [63] The Confessions of Con Cregan … Author’s copyright edition. 224pp. G. Routledge & Sons: London, 1891. 8o. [64] The Confessions of Con Cregan, &c. 224pp. Routledge and Sons: London, [1892.] 8o. [65] The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer. xii, 585pp. George Newnes: London, 1903. 8o. [66] The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer. viii, 530pp. 1903. [67] The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer. [Another edition.] [Another edition.] Harry Lorrequer … With illustrations by H. K. Browne. 2 vol. 1847. London, 1857, [1856.] 8o. [68] The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer … Illustrated by C. M. Park. With an introduction by W. K. Leask. xx, 395pp. Gresham Publishing Co.: London, [1900.] 8o. [69] The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer … With 22 illustrations by H. K. Browne (‘Phiz.’). xx, 421pp. Macmillan & Co.: London, 1905. 8o. [70] The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer. [With illustrations.] 415pp. Lewis: Manchester, [1893.] 8o. Most recent acquisitions appear first. (Older reference material is in author order. BLDSC journals/serials are in title order). [71] The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer. Illustrated by C. M. Park. vii, 395pp. Blackie & Son: London, 1903. 8o. [72] The Daltons; or, Three Roads in Life. … With illustrations by Phiz [i.e. H. K. Browne.] [Another edition.] With illustrations by H. K. Browne. [Another edition.] With illustrations. 2 vol. London, 1852. 8o. 2 vol. London, 1859. 8o. 2 vol. London, 1876. 8o. [73] The Dodd Family Abroad. … With illustrations by Phiz [i.e. H. K. Browne]. [Another copy.] The Dodd Family Abroad, &c. [Another edition.] With illustrations by H. K. Browne. [Another edition.] With illustrations. London, 1854. 8o. London, 1854. 8o. 2 vol. London, 1859. 8o. 2 vol. London, [1877.] 8o. [74] The Dodd family abroad … New edition. London, &c.: Ward, Lock & Co., [1890?] 565pp. 19 cm. [75] The Fortunes of Glencore. [Another edition.] 3 vol. London, 1857. 8o. 2 vol. 1857. [76] The fortunes of Glencore … Fourth edition. [Another edition.] With illustrations. London: Chapman & Hall, [ca. 1875]. 395pp. 17 cm. London, [1878.] 8o. [77] The Knight of Gwynne, a tale of the time of the Union. … With illustrations by “Phiz” [i.e. H. K. Browne]. [Another copy.] [Another edition.] With illustrations by H. K. Browne. Title Eighth edition. [Another edition.] With illustrations. [Another edition.] London, 1847. 8o. 2 vol. London, 1858. 8o. London, 1867. 8o. 2 vol. London, [1877.] 8o. 2 vol. G. Routledge & Sons: London, 1889. 8o. [78] The knight of Gwynne. A tale of the time of the Union. Copyright ed. for continental circulation. Leipzig: Bernh. Tauchnitz jun., 1847. 3 v; 16cm [79] The Martins of Cro’ Martin. With illustrations by “Phiz” [i.e. Hablot-Knight Browne.] [Another edition.] [Another edition.] With illustrations. London, 1856. 8o. 3 vol. 1856. 2 vol. London, [1878.] 8o. [80] The Novels of Charles Lever. Edited by his daughter [Julia Kate Neville]. 37 vol. Downey & Co.: London, 1897-99. 8o. Most recent acquisitions appear first. (Older reference material is in author order. BLDSC journals/serials are in title order). [81] The O’Donoghue; a tale of Ireland fifty years ago. With illustrations by H. K. Browne. [Another edition.] [Another edition.] With illustrations by H. K. Browne. Ninth edition. [Another edition.] With illustrations. [Another edition.] With illustrations, &c. Dublin, 1845. 8o. 480pp. 1845. London, 1858, [1857.] 8o. London, 1868. 8o. London, [1876.] 8o. 188pp. G. Routledge & Sons: London, 1887. 8o. [82] The O’Donoghue. A tale of Irish rebellion … A new edition with “A few words about the author.”. viii, 378pp. Downey & Co.: London, 1898. 8o. [83] The O’Donoghue, &c. 188pp. G. Routledge & Sons: London, 1893. 8o. [84] The Works of Charles Lever. [A review.] Reprinted from Blackwood’s Magazine, April, 1862. [London, 1866.] 8o. [85] Tom Burke of ‘Ours.’. vii, 941pp. 1902. [86] Tom Burke of “Ours.’ [Another edition.] Tom Burke of “Ours.” [Another edition.] With illustrations by H. K. Browne. [Another edition.] With illustrations. [Another edition.] With illustrations by H. K. Browne. 2 vols. 3 vol. 1848-49. London, 1857. 8o. 2 vol. London, [1876.] 8o. 224pp. G. Routledge & Sons: London, 1886. 8o. [87] Tom Burke of “Ours.” … With illustrations by Phiz. 2 vol. G. Routledge and Sons: London; Cambridge, Mass. [printed], [1892.] 8o. [88] Tom Burke of “Ours” … With 44 illustrations by H. K. Browne (‘Phiz’). xv, 766pp. Macmillan & Co.: London, 1906. 8o. [89] Tom Burke of “Ours,” &c. 224pp. G. Routledge & Sons: London, 1893. 8o. [90] Tom Burke of “Ours.” Illustrated by W. Rainey. xiii, 576pp. Blackie & Son: London, 1904. 8o. [91] Tony Butler. [By C. J. L.] [Another edition.] [Another edition.] With illustrations. 2 vol. 1866. London, [1878.] 8o. [92] Viharban. [A Rent in a Cloud, &c.] Regény. … Angolból forditotta György A. 308pp. 1882. [93] The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer. [By Charles James Lever.] With numerous illustrations by Phiz [i.e. H. K. Browne]. [Another copy.] The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, &c. Dublin, 1839. 4o. Dublin, 1839. 8o. [94] Charles O’Malley, the Irish Dragoon. A drama, in three acts. Adapted from Charles James Lever’s work. 20pp. London, [1883.] 8o. [95] Dr. Quicksilver. The life of Charles Lever. [With a portrait.] vii, 308pp. Chapman & Hall: London, 1939. 8o.

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Belfast Central Public Library holds Arthur O’Leary; Barrington; Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly; Charles O’Malley; Confessions of Harry Lorrequer; Daltons; Davenport Dunn; A Day’s Ride, or Life’s Romance; Diary and notes of Horace Templeton; Dodd Family Abroad; Fortunes of Glencore; Jack Hinton; Knight of Gwynne; Lord Kilgobbin; Luttrell of Arran; Martins of Cro’ Martin; Martin Tierney; Nuts and Nutcrackers; The O’Donoghue (1897); One of Them; Roland Cashel; Sir Brook Fosbrook; Sir Jasper Carew; Tales of the Trains; Nuts and Nutcrackers; St. Patrick’s Eve; that Boy of Norcotts; Paul Goslett’s Confessions; A Rent in a [Cloud] (1899); Tom Burke of Ours; Tony Butler.

Belfast Linenhall Library holds E. C. Downey, Charles Lever, his Life and his Letters, 2 vols. (1906).

University of Ulster Library (Morris Collection) holds Charles O’Malley, The Irish Dragoon, 2 vols. (Curry 1841); The Knight of Gwynne (Chapman 1851).

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Booksellers
Hyland Catalogue (No. 220; 1996) lists Military Novels of Charles Lever [De Luxe edn.; ltd. 500]; 9 vols., pls

De Burca Books (Cat. 1997) holds Confessions of Con. Cregan: The Irish Gil Blas. With illustrations on wood and steel by Hablot K. Brown. Engraved frontis. and half-title. Two volumes. London, Orr, n.d. Pages (1) viii, 336 (2) viii, 305. Fine in cont. half calf gilt. [£85]; Lord Kilgobbin. A Tale of Ireland in our Own Time. With eighteen illustrations by Luke Fildes. London, Chapman, 1873. New edition. Pages, ix, 470. V.good in cont. half calf gilt. [£65]

Hibernia Catalogue No. 19 lists W. J. Fitzpatrick, The Life of Charles Lever (Ward Lock c. 1890; new and rev. edn.), 391pp, £20 [Eric Stevens 1992]; Military Novels of Charles Lever, 9 vols. [De Luxe Edn., Phiz plates, 500 copies] (n.d.)] £145; Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, 2 vols. [same series.] £18. Harry Lorrequer (Downey 1901), ill. Phiz [1839]; Jack Hinton (Downey 1901), ill Phiz [1943]; Charles O’Malley (Waghorn, Cricklewood n.d.)

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Notes
Harry Lorrequer (1905 Edn.) contains facetious remarks on celibate dons of TCD (xviii); remarks on Curran (p.xix); Wolfe’s well-known song (p.1); and a general characterisation of Ireland as the ‘land of punch, priests, and potatoes’ (p.2).

The O’Donoghues: See remarks on the historical O’Donoghues in Seán Ó Tuama, Repossessions: Selected Essays on Irish Literary Heritage (Cork UP 1995) in connection with Aogán Ó Rathaille: ‘[...] It would appear indeed that Sliabh Luachra, compared with other Browne territories, was given very rough treatment indeed. The reason for this calls for some comment. / It seems - and this is a further complicating factor in the social picture of the time - that a great part of Sliabh Luachra c.1700 was a particularly lawless no man’s land, a centre of continuing resistance not alone to the new Williamite colonists but also to the old Anglo-Irish colonists such as the Brownes. Chief amongst the resistance leaders were the O’Donoghues of Glenflesk, admired by Aogán Ó Rathaille and feared by gentlemen-tenants of the Brownes such as the Herberts, who were settled on former O’Donoghue lands. The O’Donoghues, who roamed the mountainy Sliabh Luachra district at will, struck terror into the hearts of all colonists. As late as 1729, the probable year of Ó Rathaille’s death (at a time he had given up all hope for the restoration of the old order), a report on O’Donoghue activity against a new planter, who had got possession of a farm on Sliabb. Luachra, shows clearly that the O’Donoghues, at any rate, had not given up. “They burnt his crops, the report states, and lifted his cattle ... his steward was attacked ... they cut off his ears and tongue, gouged his eyes, and finished their hellish work by stabbing his wife who was enceinte, and cutting out her tongue. That the forces of the new Williamite order would wish to root out such kinds of traditional”. (p.104.) [Note that the castle of Pierce Ferriter, q.v., was destroyed by a storm in 1845.]

A Day’s Ride (1861) - first published in Dickens’s All Year Round but superceded as the chief item by Dickens's own Great Expectations (first edn. 1861) through lack of public sales. Wikipedia writes: ‘As the idea and Dickens’s ambition grew, he began writing. However, in September, the weekly All the Year Round saw its sales fall, and its flagship publication, A Day’s Ride by Charles Lever, lost favour with the public. Dickens “called a council of war”, and believed that to save the situation, “the one thing to be done was for [him] to strike in.”’ Further: ‘In some respects, Dickens conceived Great Expectations as an anti silver fork novel, attacking Charles Lever’s novel A Day’s Ride, publication of which began January 1860, in Household Words. This can be seen in the way that Dickens satirises the pretensions and morals of Miss Havisham and her sycophants, including the Pockets (except Matthew), and Uncle Pumblechook.’ (See online; accessed 28.04.2018.)

Illustrators: according the John Sutherland, Harry Lorrequer was illustrated by “Phiz”, and the first of 14 successive novels to be illustrated by him, while COPAC shows that the copyright edn. of Downey 1897 has 22 ills. by “Phiz” [incls. author’s pref. to the 1872 Edn. signed “Trieste”, pp.xv-xxii, and a Prefastory Epistle to the First Edition, Bruxelles, 1839, [xiii]-xxv. This is contrary to the suggestion, elsewhere, that Charles O’Malley was the first of Lever’s novels to benefit by “Phiz’s” engravings.

Shelley plain: Lever’s article on Shelley and its consequences are recounted in Barbara Hayley, ‘A Reading and Thinking Nation: Periodicals as the Voice of Nineteenth-century Ireland’, in Hayley and Enda McKay, ed., Three Hundred Years of Irish Periodical (Assoc. of Irish Learned Journals: Gigginstown, Mullingar 1987), pp.29-48, p.34.

What’s in a name? Kilgobbin is the name of a hunter in Father O’Flynn (1914) by Henry de Stacpoole [q.v.] - whose title-character is himself based on the creation of Alfred Perceval Graves. For a possible model for Captain Bubbleton in Tom Burke of “Ours” (1844), see under Henry Robert Addison, q.v.

Portrait: There Stephen Pearce produced a portrait in chalk on prepared paper (ee Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition, Ulster Mus. 1965).

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