Pierce Egan
Life
1772-1849; best-known as author of Life
in London; attacked the Prince Regent and Mrs. Robinson [?Mrs
Fitzherbert] in The Mistress of Royalty, or the Loves of Florizel
and Perdita (1814); Boxiana, or Sketches of Modern Pugilism,
a monthly serial (1818-24); Life in London, or The Day and Night
Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn [...] and [...] Corinthian
Bob, accompanied by Bob Logic, in monthly numbers from 1821;
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a didactic sequel (1828); furnished slang phrases
for Francis Groses Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
(1796; rev. 1823); a weekly newspaper, Pierce Egans Life
in London and Sporting Guide (1824); Pierce Egans Book
of Sports and Mirror of Life (1832); The Pilgrims of
the Thames in Search of the National (1838), dedicated to Queen
Victoria; there is an allusion to Egan in Finnegans Wake.
ODNB PI RAF OCEL OCIL |
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Works
Life in London (1820 & edns.) ill. by George & Robert Cruikshank;
Real Life in Ireland, or the Day and Night Scenes, roving rambles,
sprees, bulls, blunders, bodderation and blarney of Brian BORU, Esq. and
his elegant friend Sir Shawn ODogherty [...] high and low
life in Dublin and various parts of Ireland ... by a real Paddy (London
1821) [deemed an imitation - see note]; Life
in Dublin, or Tom, Jerry and Logic on their Travels, unpubl. com.
(1834); also The Life of an Actor; The Poetical Descriptions by T.
Greenwood, Esq. (London: C. S. Arnold 1825) [Harrington Bks., 2005.].
Reprints, John Marriott, ed., Unknown London:
Early Modernist Visions of the Metropolis 1815-45, 6 vols. (London:
Pickering & Chatto 2001), £495pp.
Bibliographical details
Real Life in Ireland, or the Day and Night
Scenes, roving rambles, sprees, bulls, blunders, bodderation
and blarney of Brian BORU, Esq. and his elegant friend Sir Shawn
ODogherty [...] high and low life in Dublin and various
parts of Ireland ... by a real Paddy (London 1821), ill. Henry
Aiken. See commentary at David Brass Rare Books, NY.]
[David Brass - cont.:] Real life in Ireland [...
&c.] Aiken, Henry, illustrator. [EGAN, Pierce, imitation of].
Real Life in Ireland; or, The Day and Night Scenes, Rovings, Rambles,
and Sprees, Bulls, Blunders, Bodderation and Blarney, of Brian Boru,
Esq., and his elegant friend Sir Shawn ODogherty. Exhibiting
a Real Picture of Characters, Manners, &c. in High and Low Life,
in Dublin and Various Parts of Ireland. Embellished with Humorous
Coloured Engravings, From Original Designs by the most eminent Artists.
By a Real Paddy. London: Jones and Co. and J.J. Marks, 1821.
Further - Brass quotes Tooley: Though
not so good it is more rare than [Egans] Life in London.
Also quotes Eneclann: Real Life in Ireland was initially
shunned by educated readers and even a quick glance at the language
and misdeeds of the central characters, Brian Boru and Sir Shawn
ODoherty, reveal that such a publication may once have been
able to cause and give offence. However, Real Life in Ireland
is more akin to the works of Flann OBrien and although written
nearly 200 years ago is very readable and very funny. / Opening
with the discharge of Shawn ODogherty from college in Dublin
with a small fortune to spend, he is joined from the country by
his friend Brian Boru, who along the way is regaled by the stories
of Peg OShambles, a one-time cockle picker from Ringsend in
Dublin, who has fallen on hard times due to her alcoholic husbands
misdeeds. Accompanied by many humorous cartoons of Brian Borus
adventures, the characters travel from Belfast to make merry in
Dublin. While the characters in Real Life in Ireland might be fictitious
the places, events and the Hiberno-Irish featured throughout are
not. Although a comparison with James Joyces travels through
Dublin is perhaps hardly appropriate, Real Life in Ireland
provides a clear account of Dublin and its inhabitants, as well
as the major sights and attractions of its suburbs. Perhaps unintentionally,
Real Life in Ireland has left an account of the real
trials and tribulations of Ireland in the 1820s. For example, the
new harbour at Dalkey is rightly criticised as a waste of money
and time the long awaited visit of George IV lamented, but not much
regretted. / All-in-all ... Real Life in Ireland make[s]
for a highly entertaining and extremely funny read and has much
to recommend it to a modern readership that might be unfamiliar
with its kind. (David Brass Rare Books [NY] - online;
accessed 25.10.2020.]
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Criticism
J. C. Reid, Bucks and Bruisers, Pierce Egan and Regency England
(London: Routledge 1971), 253pp., 10 pls., bibl. See also Louis James,
review of John Marriott, ed., Unknown London: Early Modernist Visions
of the Metropolis 1815-45, 6 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto)
[infra].
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Commentary
Eric Partridge, Adventuring Among Words
[The Language Library] (London: André Deutsch 1961), Not
Entirely Phoney [pp.13-15]: [...] The spelling
forney and pronunciation fawney should have put the lexicographers
on the right track, especially as Pierce Egan, in Finish of Tom, Jerg,
and Logic, 1828, very considerately provided a most serviceable key
when he wrote, He sports a diamond forney on his little finger
and as, in The Life of Samuel Denmore Hayward, the Modern Macheath,
1822, he used forney for a finger-ring. There, indeed, was the
key: forney, a ring, should have reminded the scholars editing
The Oxford and Webster that the fawney rig, a ring-dropping
confidence trick beloved of the underworld, and fawney, a finger-ring,
are, in sober fact, recorded in the former dictionary as fawney.
That the fawney rig signified, literally, the ring trick
might well have insinuated a suspicion that, Irishmen being masters of
the art and Irish confidence tricksters having invaded England, especially
London, long before 1781, the origin of fawney lay in Ireland.
In Ireland it lies. As so often before and since, Ireland was notably
contributing to the gaiety of nations. The Irish word - that is, an Erse,
not an Anglo-Irish, word – for a finger-ring is fainne, pronounced,
at least approximately, fawney. The great Irish potato famine of
1845 drove many honest Irish people to the United States during the decade
immediately following; with them, doubtless, went a number of less honest
persons, including confidence men. [...] (p.15; for full text, see
RICORSO Library, Criticism > International, via index,
or direct.)
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Louis James, review of John
Marriott, ed., Unknown London: Early Modernist Visions of the Metropolis
1815-45, 6 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto) in Times Literary
Supplement (28 Dec. 2001): notes tht Regency life survives deep
into the Victorian period. Like Dickenss Pickwick Papers,
the literary sensation of the following decade with which it shares significant
features, Life in London was conceived from the beginning as text
to a series of illustrations. Robert Cruikshank showed a brother-in-law,
newly returned from India, around the sights of the city, and was so intrigued
that he joined with George his elder brother to make a set of prints of
London life. They enlisted Pierce Egan to add a commentary. Egan, a popular
journalist of Irish extraction, had an unrivalled knowledge of the city
fast set, with its links to an underworld of bare-knuckled boxing, cock-fighting,
crime and prostitution, and so was an ideal guide. [I]n their forays,
it is said that the trio had begun to take on fictional identities. Robert
Cruikshank became and ingénu from the country, Jerry Hawthorne;
George, older, streetwise and raffish, became Corinthian Tom
, while Pierce Egan as scribe gently satirised himself as the green-spectacled
Bob Logic. Egan wrote an introductory section, filling out the background
of the story and characters, and creating a narrative, which was published
in parts the following year. / The resulting Life in London was
the success of the day. James writes that Unknown London
reprints the text and illustrations alongside a substantial selection
of related prose, drama and etchings which sets the stage for reassessment.
His account focuses on the linguistic features of the text and sees Egan
- whose love of flourish betrays his Tipperary roots - as
one who saw London as a city of dialects: His prose, moderated by
Harrison Ainsworth, Bulwer Lytton and above all by Charles Dickens, helped
to modernise the literary use of English. [Cont.]
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Louis James (review of Unknown London, in
Times Literary Supplement, 28 Dec. 2001) - cont.: Egan was
the first to look at London as a book, and to write a book as Londons
simulacrum. For him the city was a compete CYCLOPAEDIA, where every
man of the most religious or moral habits, attached to any sect, may find
something to please his palate [...] ; there is not a street
in London but may be compared to a large or small volume of intelligence,
abounding with anecdote, incident and peculiarities. A court or alley
most be obscure indeed, if it does not afford some remarks [...].
the EXTREMES, in every point of view, are daily to be met with in
the Metropolis. James writes, Tom and Jerry dominated London
and the provincial theatre across the decade, prompting the disgusted
Thomas Carlyle to note in 1828 that no play had every enjoyed such
currency on the English stage as this most classic performance.
James remarks that it became a marker in English theatrical history breaking
with Romantic moulds and introducing a vogue for realistic
settings; sees Gays Beggars Opera as standing behind
Egans work; quotes from a text regrettably absent from the
volume [viz., Renton Nicholsons The Town, Ser. 1, 1837-42]
which claimed to be one of the most racy, spicy and figging [light-fingered]
specimens of literature ever produced, which would represent the
hidden pornographic underbelly of London. (, pp.4-5.)
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References
D. J. ODonoghue, The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical
Dictionary (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co 1912); Irish origin, perhaps
born in Ireland; in London, Tom and Jerry, burlesque songs and
parodies (Lon. 1822); founded Bells Life (sporting). Other
works were comic poems, The Show Folks (1831) and Mathews
Comic Annual, or The Snuff-Box and the Little Bird (1831). FURTHER,
A son, Pierce (1814-1880), a clever novelist, did etchings
for Pilgrims, and published novels on feudal period; ed. Home
Circle (1849-51), contrib. London Journal. Works incl. Eve,
or the Angel of Innocence (1867) and The Poor Girl (1862-3);
pioneer of cheap literature.
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Margaret Drabble, ed., Oxford Companion of
English Literature (OUP: 1985), lists The Elder, 1772-1849; Life
in London, or the Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn Esq., and Corintian
Tom, issued in monthly nos. from 1820 and complete in 1821, interesting
for the light it throws on manners and slang phrases of the period; Pierce
Egans Life in London and Sporting Guide, 1824, developed into
Bells Life in London [mag.]; a son and namesake (1814-80)
wrote a vast number of novels.
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Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English,
The Romantic Period, 1789-1850, Vol 1 (1980), lists Pierce Egan, Real
Life in Ireland, or the Day and Night Scenes [&c] by a Real Paddy
and refers to his incredible stage-Irishman in that text, quoting: Famd
for potatoes, love, and whiskey,/For men so brave, and girls so frisky,/For
ease, for elegance, and grace,/With matchless impudence of face,/An isle
there lies, tis close to hand,/Good humour calls it Paddys
Land, ... Tis numbered amongst the worldly wonders,/The fountain-head
of bulls and blunders. (pp.5-6).
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Private library: A copy of Life in London
was in the possession of Mary Campbell (Green Rd., Blackrock, Co. Dublin)
in 1990.
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Booksellers
Richard Beaton (Lewes, S. Sussex), lists for Pierce Egan (The
Younger)
Edward the Black Prince; A Tale of Feudal Times [1855]
Quintin Matsys, The Blacksmith of Antwerp [1839] Fair
Rosamond, An Historical Romance [1844]
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Notes
Lots of fun: There is an allusion to Pierce Egan in James Joyces
Finnegans Wake (1939): Compost of Dufblin by Pierce Egan
with the baugh of Baughkley of Fino Ralli. Explain why there is such a
number of orders of religion in Asea! (447.23).
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