       |
Life
| 1800-1889 [m. A. M. Hall, q.v.]; b. 9 May 1800, in Geneva Barracks, nr. Waterford; 4th son of Robert Hall who established the Devon Fencibles, 1794, having previously fought in Gibraltar; Hall Snr. failed in copper-mining business in Ireland, his wife supporting the family by millinery; moved to Cork and left there for London, 1821; studies law; acted as parliamentary reporter in the House of Lords, 1823, editing the Literary Observer also in 1823; fnd. and ed. The Amulet, A Christian and Literary Remembrancer, 1826-37, up to the collapse of its publisher, when Hall acquired all its debts; m. Anna Hall [née Fielding] 20 Sept. 1824; |
| ed. The Spirit and Manners of the Age (1826), in which the first work of his wife appeared (“Master Ben”, 1829); also ed. The Morning Journal (1829-30); sub-ed. and lter editor, of New Monthly Magazine (1830); wrote a History of France (1830) for Colburn’s Juvenile Library; enrolled at the Inner Temple, and finally called to the bar in 1841; never practised, but inscribed ‘Barrister at Law’ on title-page of Poems (1850); unsuccessful newspaper, The Town; sub-ed. John Bull and manager of Britannia; editor and principal shareholder of Art Union Monthly Journal, 1839, called The Art Journal from The Art Journal, 1849; ed. Art Journal, 1839-80; |
| vigorously criticised the trade in Old Masters and pioneered engravings of sculpture; published engravings of Robert Vernon’s collection before it went to the National Gallery, 1848; issued authorised catalogue of 150 engravings taken from Queen Victoria’s private collection, 1851; remained on as paid editor after the failure of an illustrated report on the Great Exhibition, 1851; Gallery of Modern Sculpture (1849-54); ed. Book of British Ballads (1842); Memoirs of Great Men and Women ... from personal acquaintance (1871); retired and received a civil list pension for fostering art appreciation in England, 1880. ODNB PI DIB DIW DIL IF MKA RAF OCIL |
[ top ]
Works| [connected with Ireland] |
|
See also A Letter to Irish Temperance Societies: concerning the present state of Ireland, and its connexion with England (London [1843]), pamph., 23 cm. |
| Microfilm |
|
Bibliographical details
Hall’s Ireland: Mr & Mrs Hall’s Tour of 1840 [abridged vers. of Do., London: Hall, Virtue & Co. 1841, sic], ed. Michael Scott (London: Sphere Books 1984), xix, 480pp., ill., maps. Note: title of the copy-text edition not given; follows the text of the Virtue edition [here 1841; recte 1870] and incorporates notes and addenda of the ‘new edition’ published some ten years after which locates the footnotes in the original in the text, while the folklore was removed to the appendices instead. Scott purposely omits passages relating to the ‘“historical” background’ because of its ‘lack of veracity and dubious authority’, being otherwise intrusive; ditto most of the ‘figures’ . (See under Quotations, infra .)Index of concluding Vol. II is virtually confined to place-names and incomplete in respect of persons. Appendix to Vol. I contains stories told to the Halls, the dialogue being given in Hiberno-English [with a pref. note by Scott]., Appendix to Vol. II contains separate remarks on Cottages [420]; Education [425]; Society [429; higher classes - old Irish gentry almost extinct; distinguishes between suspicious ‘Irish Gentleman’ and gracious ‘gentleman from Ireland’; comments on half-sirs; ‘in writing of Irish women we refer to no particular classor grade; from the most elevated to the most humble, they possess innate purity of thought, word, and deed, and are certainly unsurpassed – if they can be equalled – for qualities of the heart, mind, and temper, which make the best companions, the safest counsellors, the truest friends, and afford the surest securities for sweet and upright discharge of duties in all relations of life’; following note insists that these are the remarks of but one author, an Englishman, not an Irishwoman; Servants [432] conditions of, very bad; Secret Societies [435], with reference to 450,000 Irishmen dead on foreign service [Irish Brigades], 1691-1745; rapparees; Houghers; Whiteboys; Right-boys; Steel-boys; Oak-boys; Peep-of-day-boys’, countered by Defenders; Terry Alts (Clare); Carders; Rockites; Moyle Rangers; Paddy Cars; Shanavests; Caravets; [See Hall’s comment on Irish secret societies - infra.] Constabulary [439]; Faction Fights [445]; Round Towers [453]; The Irish Language [460]. Epilogue. Scott’s acknowledgements incl. thanks to Padraig Ó Tailliur, Tim Coughlan. (See sundry passages in Quotations, infra.)
Note: parts of Ireland, Its Scenery, Character, [.... 7c.] were issued in 4 separate vols. in 1853 as Hand Books for Ireland.-Dublin and Wicklow.-The North and Giants' Causeway.-The South and Killarney.-The West and Connemara.
|
Quotations
Keening: ‘At Brandon we beheld a melancholy scene-several carts returning to their homes in the country, which they had quitted in the morning with money to procure food, but compelled to go back without it. Woman and children accompanied them with loud cries, literally “keening”, as if they were following a corpse to its place of rest.’ (Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, Ireland: Its scenery, Character, And history, Vol 1, 1841; cited Conrad Bladey, Irish Potato Famine Commemoration Website [link].)
Secret Societies: (Mr & Mrs Hall’s Tour of 1840 [3 vols., 1841-43] ed. Michael Scott [abridged in 2 vols.] (London: Sphere Books 1984): ‘We do not hesitate our conviction that of all these societies there has not been one that has not been influenced by or designed to influence Religion, but that the sole object of their jurisdictions is Land, and that in issuing their mandates and executing their sentences, no regard whatever is given to the consideration whether the object of them is Catholic or Protestant.’ (p.438.)
References
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period (Gerrards Cross 1980), Vol 2, notes that his father was stationed nr. Waterford; ed. Amulet, Art Journal, et al.; m. Maria Fielding, 1824; d. Kensington, 16 March 1889. [Bibl. as supra].
Emerald Isle Books (1995) lists Ireland, Its Scenery, Character [... &c.], 3 vols. (London: How & Parsons 1841-43) [£325].
Belfast Central Library holds Memory of Thomas Moore (1879), 32pp.; Retrospect of a Long Life, 2 vols. (1883); Sketches of Irish Character (1855); Amulet, ed. (1834); also S. C. and A. M. Hall, Ireland, Its Scenery, character etc., 3 vols. (1841, 1842); The North and The Giant’s Causeway (1853); A Week at Killarney (1850); MORRIS holds Ireland, Its Scenery, Character &c, 3 vols. (1866); A Week at Killarney (1850) 217p.
Peter Ellis Books (Cat. 2004) lists S. C. Hall, ed. & intro., The Book of British Ballads (London: Jermiah How 1842; 2nd edn. 1844), vi, 234pp.; with var. illustrators incl. Richard Dadd [4 to “Robin Goodfellow”], w. B. Scott, J. Franklin, J. H. Townsend, E. Courbould, &c.; called by Gordon Ray Ɵthe most ambitious English book with wood engravings’ between 1790 and 1914.
[ top ]