SOURCE: "The Nature of the Irish Novel," in Family Chronicles: Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, ed. by Cóilín Owens, Wolfhound Press, 1987, pp. 41-51.

In the following essay, Flanagan argues that nineteenth-century Irish novels were all written, to some degree, with a propagandist goal of explaining or defending Ireland or the Irish character to an English audience; Flanagan contends that this was the weakest feature of the Irish novel.

Nineteenth-century Ireland¹ was a land splintered by divided loyalties and ancient hatreds. Sir Walter Scott, visiting the country in 1825, noted with some contempt: "Their factions have been so long envenomed, and they have such narrow ground to do their battle in, that they are like men fighting with daggers in a hogshead."² Much later Yeats, writing as an Irishman and in bitterness, would make the same point:

 Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us...