[Rev.] John Boyce


Life
1810-1864 [pseud. “Paul Peppergrass”]; b. Donegal; ord. Maynooth, 1837; emig. America c.1845; wrote Catholic novels including Shandy M’Guire, or Tricks upon Travellers (1848), The Spaewife (1853), and Mary Lee, or Yankee in Ireland (1864), all publ. in America as “Paul Peppergrass”; as well as works of piety and historical biography; published fiction and lectures on the influence of Catholicism; assisted John Banim with the second series of Tales of the O’Hara Family; Shandy M’Guire, which concerns the activities of a ring of Protestant proselytisers in the rural North of Ireland, was dramatised by James Pilgrim [q.v.] as Shandy Maguire, or the Bould Boy of the Mountain, 2 acts (1855); d. in America. DIW IF MKA DUB OCIL

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Works
Novels
  • [as “Paul Peppergrass”], Shandy McGuire, or Tricks upon Travellers [ ... &c.] (NY: P. Donahoe 1848).
  • The Spaewife [ ... &c.] ([NY: P. Donahoe] 1852).
  • Mary Lee; or, the Yankee in Ireland ([NY: P. Donahoe] 1860).
Drama
James Pilgrim, Shandy Maguire, or the Bould Boy of the Mountain, 2 acts (NY: Samuel French [1868]) - viz.—
  • [James Pilgrim,] Shandy Maguire (Boston: William V. Spencer 1855), 38pp. [copies in TCD Lib & Sheffield UL; available as English & American Drama of the Nineteenth Century microfilm; also at ProQuesta - online].
  • [James Pilgrim,] Shandy Maguire: or the Bould Boy of the Mountain. A drama. In two acts [French's Standard Drama] (NY Samuel French [1868]), 12°, ill.; half-title [copy in BL, as interleaved promptbook w. unnumbered pages of MS notes; also available in Readex Microprint (NY 1967) [copy in Cambridge UL].

See also San Columbano, pseud.,] The Confessional Unmasked: or, The Revelations - a farce, adapted from “Shandy Maguire” (London: R. Washbourne 1872), 8° [copies in BL & Oxford UL].

[ See Listing for Shandy Maguire at COPAC - online. ]

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Criticism
  • A Biographical Sketch of the Rev. John Boyce, D. D. 1810-64, [rev. edn.] (Dublin 1941), 113pp. [shows him to have been a friend of Dickens and Thackeray].
  • Patrick Maume, ‘Father Boyce, Lady Morgan and Sir Walter Scott: A Study in Intertextuality and Catholic Polemics’, in Evangelicals and Catholics in Nineteenth-century Ireland, ed. James H. Murphy (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2005), Chap. 13 [p.165ff.]

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References
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), lists with summaries Shandy Maguire (1848), The Spaewife (1853), and Mary Lee (1864); all pseud. John Peppergrass.

Brian McKenna, Irish literature, 1800-1875: a Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1978), lists Shandy McGuire, or Tricks upon Travellers, &c. (1848); The Spaewife ... (1852); Mary Lee, or the Yankee in Ireland (1860), all publ. in America, and all by ‘Paul Peppergrass’; also A Biographical Sketch of the Rev. John Boyce, D. D. 1810-64, [rev. edn.] (Dublin 1941). 113pp., shows him to have been a friend of Dickens and Thackeray.

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2 cites him as co-author with John Banim of Tales by the O’Hara Family, 2 series (London: Simpkin & Marshall 1825; Colborn 1826), and The Bit o’ Writing (London: Saunders & Otley 1838).

University of Ulster Library holds Shandy M’Guire, or Tricks upon Travellers, being a story of the North of Ireland (P. Donahoe, 1853); by [pseud.] Paul Peppergrass.

Belfast Central Public Library holds holds Shandy McGuire [1853] and identical title by John Stirling Coyne.

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