Publications

Literature

The History of Fiction Trilogy and Oxford History of the Irish Book

Professor Murphy's work in the history of fiction suggests that the cosmopolitanism of contemporary Irish literature has more in common with the literature of nineteenth-century Ireland than it does with that of the Irish literary revival or of twentieth-century Ireland. These latter were mostly concerned with issues of identity that have largely been settled. Today's Irish writers, struggling for a place in the international world of publishing, have more in common with their nineteenth-century colleagues who competed in the publishing world of London.

Irish literature of the 1830-1890 period has been neglected for several reasons. Firstly, it was followed by the Irish Literary Revival which featured authors such as W.B. Yeats and skeptics such as James Joyce who were united in their disparagement of the period that went before them, as merely derivative of British literary models and as pandering to British stereotypes of Ireland. In recent years, Irish romanticism (1800-30) has received much critical attention but again to the detriment of the Victorian period. Finally, late-twentieth-century postcolonial criticism, assenting to the same view of the Victorian period as that of the Irish revivalists, has trawled the Victorian period merely for evidence to reinforce its schematic view of the negative effects of a culture supposedly damaged by colonial oppression.

The challenge in restoring nineteenth-century Ireland to itself in terms of literature, and specifically in terms of fiction in the case of Professor Murphy's own research, has been two-fold. It has involved not only recovering the complex richness of the actual circumstances of literary production at the time but also widening the number of texts and authors considered in the course of literary analysis.

For these reasons his trilogy of books on the history of fiction involve an analysis of large numbers of texts, establishing a methodology in the first, Catholic Fiction and Social Reality in Ireland, 1873-1922 (1997), widening the base of investigation in the second, Ireland: A Social, Cultural and Literary History, 1791-1891 (2003), and tackling a broad area in considerable depth in the third, Irish Novelists and the Victorian Age (Oxford, 2011).

His work in this area began with Catholic Fiction and Social Reality in Ireland, 1873-1922 (1997). This book suggests a structure for understanding fiction in terms of class and social dynamics. It broadly covers the period of the Irish Revival but instead of focusing on poetry and drama written by Anglo-Irish Protestants of putative aristocratic background it concentrates on fiction written by middle-class Catholics. Through a reading of several hundred novels of the time, it argues that until 1891, a key moment in Irish politics, novels were written mainly by members of the upper middle class who were concerned to normalize their position in Victorian society. After 1891 novels tended to be written by a group of oppositional intellectuals who were critical of the new intra-Irish establishment which was emerging. The book thus provides an important context for understanding the work of James Joyce, so often wrongly seen as sui generis.

Books The scope of Professor Murphy's work was broadened by Ireland, a Social, Cultural and Literary History, 1791-1891 (2003). It is a survey of the century, based largely on a reading of secondary sources. It serves as a guide to the century but also pursues a number of lines of argument of its own. Principal among these is that the literature of the century should be seen in terms of its own social, political and cultural setting and not merely as a prelude to the Irish literary revival of the last decade of the nineteenth and first decade of the twentieth centuries. Yeats's efforts in the 1890s to reshape nineteenth-century Irish literature resulted in the creation of what was called 'Anglo-Irish Literature', a canonical construct which held sway in the academy until very recently. Not only did it elide the differences between very diverse sorts of writers but it was severely prescriptive about which writers merited inclusion. This book argues that one of the benefits of doing away with the Yeatsian canon is that it opens up nineteenth-century Irish literature as a source for cultural studies.

Murphy's cumulative work in the area resulted in Irish Novelists and the Victorian Age (Oxford, 2011). In the Victorian age there were hundreds of Irish authors who wrote thousands of novels. Some had Irish themes, others did not. Many were highly popular with what was largely a British reading audience.

Irish Novelists and the Victorian Age offers the first comprehensive study of these writers, based on a reading of around 370 novels by 150 authors. They include writers whose names continue to be remembered, among them William Carleton, the peasant novelist who wielded much influence, and Charles Lever, whose serious work was destroyed by the slur of 'rollicking', together with Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, George Moore, Emily Lawless, Somerville and Ross, Bram Stoker and three of the leading authors from the new-woman movement, Sarah Grand, Iota and George Egerton. This book examines their writing in a variety of contexts: the political, economic, and cultural developments of the time; the vicissitudes of the reading audience; the realities of a publishing industry that was for the most part London-based; the often difficult circumstances of the lives of the novelists; and the ever changing genre of the novel itself, to which Irish authors often made a contribution.

Politics, history, religion, gender and, particularly, land, over which nineteenth-century Ireland was deeply divided, featured as key themes for fiction. Finally, the book engages with the critical debate of recent times concerning the supposed failure of realism in the nineteenth-century Irish novel, looking for deeper causes than have hitherto been offered and discovering occasions on which realism turned out to be possible.

The impact of Professor Murphy's work in this area can be seen through the reaction of reviewers to Irish Novelists and the Victorian Age:

Murphy has written a strongly sympathetic account of these novels, which is sensitive to the particular forces that produced some of the enduring tropes of Irish fiction in this period . . . A book like this is invaluable for attempting to come to terms with nineteenth-century Ireland. This book is an important contribution to our understanding not just of nineteenth-century Irish writing but to Irish literary history as a whole.

—Irish University Review
It is a measure of Murphy's independence of mind that while he by no means dismisses such thinking [postcolonial analysis] out of hand, he is prepared to offer a series of contextual studies of different kinds of nineteenth-century Irish novels and novelists that complicates the generally received picture in fascinating ways.

—Victorian Studies

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Irish Novelists and the Victorian Age is reinforced by Murphy's editing of the 750-page Oxford History of the Irish Book: volume 4: the Irish Book in English, 1800-91 (2011). Consisting of fifty-one chapters it details the story of the book in Ireland from the Act of Union, which ended Ireland's lucrative exemption from British copyright, to the Irish revival, with its emphasis on cultural nationalism. Though retaining its own identity during this period the Irish publishing industry also participated in a wider British publishing culture, less perhaps the result of political change than of the industrialization of production. The chapters in this volume deal with book production and distribution and the differing ways in which publishing existed in Dublin, Belfast, and the provinces. The nineteenth century saw a dramatic rise in literacy rates in Ireland, the advent of national education, and the development of new opportunities and spaces for reading that eclipsed previous communal reading practices. Religious publishing was a major enterprise not only because of the rise in devotionalism but also because of the religious controversies that raged in the early part of the century. Literary genres engaged both Irish and British audiences with Irish issues, though they found a publishing outlet largely through London publishers. Scholarly societies of both the antiquarian and scientific varieties sustained a relatively high degree of local publishing, mostly through journals. Medical and musical publishing appeared for quite a while to defy the centralizing pull of British publishing. In spite of the challenges of the times, writers, publishers, readers, and institutions often responded with energy and creativity to a world of extraordinary change. It was a world of considerable diversity and great fascination. Relying on a high degree of original research, both archival and bibliographical, this volume treats both general trends and individual stories.

Murphy's work in the area of fiction has included many other chapters and articles ancillary to his interest in the history of fiction. He has edited, with Heidi Hansson, a book of essays, Fictions of the Irish Land War (2014), that further explores one of the important genres of the period. He has also edited one of the most important land-war novels, Rosa Mulholland's Marcella Grace (2001).


Innovative Readings, Introductory Contributions and The Irish Revival

Professor Murphy has also pioneered new approaches to literary analysis which ground the reading of fiction in its historical context. Examples include the following chapter and article:

Murphy's work in literature has extended to contributions to large-scale introductory projects. He is the author of

He has made significant contributions to the following:

He has also contributed to the study of the Irish revival in chapters such as

With Betsey Taylor FitzSimon he is the editor of a collection of essays entitled, The Irish Revival Reappraised (2004).

 

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