Metropolitan Print Culture and the Creation of Literary Ulster

Abstract

The appearance in Belfast of Sydney Owenson’s passionately nationalistic novel The Wild Irish Girl, a national tale (1806) was celebrated by the republican poet James Orr, who praised the author for championing the superiority of the Irish character, defined by Orr as that which is ‘friendly in the sportive throng, [and] Hospitable to the stranger’ (ll. 10–11). Whether reformist or conservative, radical or patriotic, many of the poems published by the Thomson circle in the decades immediately following the United Irish Rebellion and the Anglo-Irish Union seek to present an image, or a vision, of a peaceful and culturally flourishing nation with first-rate educational and artistic provision in its regional capital of Belfast. An amusing article from the Dublin magazine The Satirist (1809–10) testifies to the lingering radical reputation of the town of Belfast, where ‘national sentiment, will not be denied by anyone who recollects the ebullitions of Irish patriotism in the years 1796, 1797, and 1798’.¹ The review goes on, however, to distinguish tartly between ‘the genuine amor patria’ displayed in Dublin, tellingly described as ‘the Irish metropolis’, and the ‘pride […] and vast knowledge of commercial transaction’ exhibited by the many ‘Scottish-descended’ residents of Belfast. The Satirist commentary reflects a sense in which Belfast was considered by the Dublin literati to be a space which was culturally ‘other’ and still somewhat provincial, and where the intellectual ranks of the town were dominated by bourgeois merchants and bankers.

ERIN’s friend! and ERIN’S glory!

Manners-painting patriot fair,

Whilst thou tell’st th’ affecting story,

Of thy country’s worth and care;

I with fond and filial bosom

Hope, and surely not in vain

That her shamrock yet may blossom,

And her harp resound again!

On our shores there may be wildness

That mere force will ne’er remove:

Nothing but the voice of mildness,

Can engage the ear of love.

Clemency, in courteous greatness,

Soon might turbulence disarm;

As now Spring, with smiles of sweetness,

tills the rage of Winter’s storm.

(James Orr, ‘To Miss Owenson, the Elegant Authoress of The Wild Irish Girl’, in Orr, 1817, p. 83, ll. 1–8; 41–9)