Life
1800-1875; his Specimens of the Early Native Poetry of Ireland (1846) includes work by Callanan, Anster, Furlong, Mangan, W. H. Drummond, Ferguson, and Edward Walsh. MKA RAF.
Works
An Essay Towards Investigating the Causes that have Retarded the Progress of Literature in Ireland. And the most efficient means of promoting its advancement. Paper read before the Belfast Rhetorical Society, Nov. 25, 1840 (Belfast 1840); Specimens of the Early Native Poetry of Ireland, in English metrical translations, with hist. and biog. notices (Dublin McGlashan, 1846).
Commentary
Michael Cronin, Translating Ireland: Translations, Languages, Cultures (Cork UP 1996), quoting: ‘It seems a prominent characterisitc of the present day, both in these islands and on the continent, that the popular taste is recurring to the productions of early times, and reviving the spirit of primitive literary ages. Of this, the institution of national Archaeological societies, both in England and irealnd, would of itself afford sufficient evidence.’ (Specimens ... [ &c.], 1846, p.iii; here p.105.)
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References
Brian McKenna, Irish Literature, 1800-1875: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1978), listing Specimens of the Early Native Poetry of Ireland, in English metrical translations, with hist. and biog. notices (Dublin McGlashan, 1846); it includes Callanan, Anster, Furlong, Mangan, W. H. Drummond, Ferguson, and Edward Walsh. Note, McKenna calls An Essay Towards Investigating the Causes that have Retarded the Progress of Literature in Ireland (1840) ‘a very important article’ which instances the paucity of educational and literary institutions, native periodicals, and the ‘neglect of native literati’ (p.49).
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol. 2), supplies variant bio-dates: 1818-1904; lists An Essay towards Investigating the causes that have retarded the progress of literature in Ireland (Belfast 1840); Specimens of the Early Native Poetry of Ireland in English metrical translations by Miss Brooke, Dr. Drummond, S. Ferguson, J. C. Mangan, T. Furlong, H. Grattan Curran, Ed. Walsh, J. D. D’Alton, and J. Anster etc. With historical and biographical notes by H. R. Montgomery (M’Glashan 1846; enlarged ed. Hodges Figgis, 1892, xv, 311p.). Also, Thomas Moore, his Life, Writing, and Contemporaries (1860); Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Sir R. Steele (1865); Famous Literary Impostures (1884). Bibl., Irish Book Lover, I, 100-1; IX, 7, 8, Feb.-Mar. 1918, pp.71-2.
Notes
Namesake: Henry Riddell Montgomery is not to be confused with Henry Montgomery, 1788-1865, author of The Creed of an Arian (1830).
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