Norreys Jephson O’Conor

Life
1885-1958 [occas. O’Conor]; b. New York; ed. Cutler School and Harvard, studying Old and Middle English under F. N. Robinson; lived at the The Castle, Mallow, Co. Cork, family place of his maternal anc6estors, 1913-14; works incl. Battles and Enchantments (1923), reflecting his awareness of the poor standard of scholarly translations for readers’ use; and Changing Ireland: Literary Backgrounds of the Irish Free State, 1889-1922 (1924), a concerted attempt to write the literary history of the Revival in the footsteps of Thomas MacDonagh - but with careful attention to non-Republican and Unionist writers also. IF2

[ Changing Ireland: Literary Backgrounds for the Free State, 1899-1922 (Harvard UP 1924) - is available in RICORSO as .html, .pdf, and .doc. ]

Bibliographical details
Changing Ireland: Literary Backgrounds of the Irish Free State, 1889-1922, by Norreys Jephson O’Conor, author of Battles and Enchantments, &c. [epigraph: ‘Their sound is gone out into all lands; and their words into the ends of the earth’: Psalms XIX:4] (Harvard UP; London: Humphrey Milford / Oxford UP 1924), xii, 259pp. Preface [vii-ix], Contents: I. One Reason for the Irish Problem [3]; II. The Gaelic Background of Ireland's Literary Revival [20]; III. The Early Irish Fairies and Fairyland [45]; IV. The Re-davisation of Anglo-Irish Literature [64]; V. Yeats and His Vision [72]; VI. A Note on T. W. Rolleston [83]; VII. Dora Sigerson Shorter [88]; VIII. Modern Anglo-Irish Poetry [94; see details]; IX. Some Irish Poets of the Allied Cause in the World War [121; see details]; X. Lord Dunsany: Irishman [148]; XI. A Dramatist of Changing Ireland. REVIEWS: A Celtic Psaltery [175]; The Father of the Celtic Renaissance [179]; James Stephens and the Irish Sagas [186]; Lady Gregory: Folklorist [192]; Curtin's Irish Folk Tales [196]; an Irish “Uncle Tom's Cabin” [199]; Ireland and England [205]; Prelate and Professor on Irish Politics [211]; an Irish Leader and a Sinn Fein Plea [220]; Chesterton Analyzes the Irish Question [230]; an Apologist for Sinn Fein [235]; Ireland from A Modern Point of View [240]; Notes; Index of Names.

Chap. VIII: Modern Anglo-Irish Poetry contains studies of Nora Hopper (p.95ff.), J. M. Synge (98-99), James Stephens (p.99-102), Robert Graves (102-05), Seamus O’Sullivan (p.99; pp.105-06), Padraic Colum (107-08), James H. Cousins (109-110), Joseph Campbell/Seosamh MacCathmaoil (110-12), Miss W. M. Letts (112-16), Francis Ledgwidge (116-20) [End.]

Chap. IX: Some Irish Poets of the Allied Cause in the World War offers a reminder that "the number of these men and women is realised by few Americans" since "[p]oets of the Rebellion [1916] monopolized the stage to the exclusion of poets loyal to the War." (p.122.) Poets studied incl. Stephen Gwynn (p.123-26), Frederick S. Boas (126-27), Katherine Tynan (127-28); Florence M. Wilson (128), Jane Barlow (128), Robert Graves (131-32), Thomas Kettle (133-34), W. B. Yeats (135), “AE” Russell (135-37), Winifred Letts (137-38), Patrick MacGill (137-40), and Francis Ledwidge (137-40; end.)

Preface: ‘[...] Although it is generally known that many of the leaders in the Irish Rebellion of 1916 were men of letters, comparatively few people realize how intimate has been the connection between Irish political thought and the literary revival. Standish O’Grady, Douglas Hyde, and William Butler Yeats are as truly founders of the Irish Free State as were Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins: O’Grady reinterpreted the glory and the dignity of early Gaelic Ireland; Hyde stayed the decay of Gaelic speech; and Yeats added to the national heritage a beauty partly compounded of ancient things. In thirty years Irish men and women have grown to understand the continuity of their tradition: that they are the inheritors of a highly developed tribal civilization untouched by Roman influences, revealed in a vernacular literature going back to prehistoric times and of a high stage of stylistic development. Behind the work of the creative writers, and even of the Gaelic League, lies the accomplishment of the scholars who have [vii] edited, arranged, and explained the literature written in Gaelic from the ninth to the nineteenth century: this is the treasure-house of the national imagination, literary manner, and polity. Consciously or unconsciously, the Irish writers in Gaelic and in English who have built up the ideal of nationality expressed politically in the Free State have been influenced by their Gaelic literary heritage. Fully to understand the development of Ireland from 1889 to 1922 requires a knowledge of Anglo-Irish literature of the period; and to grasp the significance of this literature is to examine it in relation to the older Gaelic; Anglo-Irish literature, though written in English, thus is found Irish in imagination and in style.
 The papers collected in this volume are an attempt at such a study, in which the late Thomas MacDonagh, with Literature in Ireland, was a distinguished pioneer.[...]’ (pp.vii-viii) [Available at Internet Archive - online; accessed 06.05.2024. See also under Mary Hayden - supra.]

[...]

Ireland from a Modern Point of View (1923, being a review of Mary Hayden & George A. Moonan, A Short History of the Irish People): ‘Probably no event in modern Ireland has proved to be of more far-reaching importance than the founding of the Gaelic League in 1893; for, through the efforts of this society, not only has the Irish language been rehabilitated, but Irish men and women have been brought to a real consciousness of their national heritage from the past in customs, polity, and thought. Of course, foreign scholars have seconded ably the endeavors of the League to point out that there is an Irish civilization. The Germans particularly lost no opportunity to discover the splendors of Gaelic antiquity, with a purpose made clear only in the summer of 1914, and not yet understood by many Irish people, especially in these United States. It was the well-known Heinrich Zimmer who, as long ago as 1887, published in the Preussische Fahrbucher his now famous essay on “The Irish Element in Medieval Culture.” Thanks to such various and cumulative researches and impulses, Irish people are now becoming universally [241] aware of the continuity of their culture and their traditions.’ (pp.240-41; available at Internet Archive - online.)

[ A raw copy of Changing Ireland (1924) is available in RICORSO > Library > Critics - via index or as attached. Line breaks to be met in the .html download from Internet Archive have been eliminated and some editorial attention has been given to layout and OCR (i.e., spelling). The following formats are available in RICORSO - .html, .pdf, and .doc. ]

 

References
Desmond Clarke, Ireland in Fiction: A Guide to Irish Novels, Tales, Romances and Folklore [Pt. 2] (Cork: Royal Carbery 1985), lists Battles and Enchantments Retold from Ancient Irish Literature (London: Sands; Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1923), 168pp. [freely based on Stokes and de Joubainville]; There was a Magic in Those Days (London: Elkin Mathews 1928), 64pp. ill. J. Gower Parks [based on ‘The King of the Leprechauns, Journey to Emania’ with many parallels to Swift’s Voyage to Brobdingnag; Esirt the leprechaun in Fergus’s palace at Emain ... told in matter of fact way’].

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