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Ireland
Valerie Coghlan
Ireland has a long tradition of literary creativity, but this has focused mainly on adult
literature, and until very recently Irish children and adolescents looked mainly to Britain
and the USA as their source of reading material, particularly in relation to contemporary
matters.
Reasons for this may be speculated upon. Perhaps it was due to political and religious
unrest in Ireland which did not encourage the flow of writing for children which took
place elsewhere in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Indeed,
much of the best adult Irish literature rebels against and frequently rejects the
constraints of the society in which many authors grew to maturity, and until very recently
this questioning spirit would not have been acceptable in contemporary Irish children’s
books.
To a large extent, what was read by Irish children in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries and earlier, paralleled the literary diet available to children in England. While
not specifically written for children, Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift was
widely read by them and may claim to be the first children’s novel by an Irish writer.
Later in the eighteenth century, Maria Edgeworth’s was an influential voice in the
tradition of Mrs Barbauld, with publications including The Parent’s Assistant (1796) and
Early Lessons (1801).
During this period the chapbook trade flourished. John Newbery’s publications were
widely available and a number of his children’s books were edited or revised by Oliver
Goldsmith. The founders of the Kildare Place Society, a philanthropic organisation
dedicated to the education of the poor, recognising a need for reading material for the
children whom it sought to educate, began to publish books specifically for the young,
and were probably the first Irish publishers to do so. Their first publication was The
History of Joseph in 1817 and between 1817 and 1827 their Literary Assistant, the
Reverend Charles Bardin, wrote a number of books about travel and natural history
that were original or loosely adapted from existing works.
For many centuries, the fertile ground of myth and folk-tales was a vital element in
fostering the imaginative development of Irish children. Mostly these stories were passed
on by seanchaithe or story-tellers until the latter part of the nineteenth century, when a
renewed interest in Celtic folklore encouraged retellings by, among others, W.B.Yeats
(Irish Fairy Tales (1892)) and Ella Young (Celtic Wonder Tales (1910)). More recent
collections include Irish Sagas and Folk Tales (1954) by Eileen O’Faolain, who also wrote
several novels for children, Liam MacUistin’s The Táin (1989), Michael Scott’s Irish Hero