Background
William Carleton was born at Prillisk, Clogher on the 4th of March 1794. His father was a tenant farmer, who supported a family of fourteen children on as many acres, and young Carleton passed his early life among scenes precisely similar to those he afterwards delineated with so much power and truthfulness. His father was remarkable for his extraordinary memory, and had a thorough acquaintance with Irish folklore; the mother was noted throughout the district for the sweetness of her voice.
Education
The education received by Carleton was of a very humble description. As his father removed from one small farm to another, he attended at various places the hedge-schools, which used to be a notable feature of Irish life.
Career
The admirable little picture of one of schools is given in the sketch called "The Hedge School" included in Traits and Stories of Irish Peasantry.
Most of his learning was gained from a curate named Keenan, who taught a classical school at Donagh, which Carleton attended from 1814 to 1816.
An amusing account of this phase of his existence is given in the ittle sketch, " Denis O'Shaughnessy. "
He resolved to cast himself boldly upon the world, and try what fortune had in store for him.
He went to Killanny, Co Louth, and for six months acted as tutor in the family of a farmer named Piers Murphy, and after some other experiments he set out for Dublin, and arrived in the metropolis with 26 9d.
in his pocket.
He first sought occupation as a bird-stuffer, but a proposal to use potatoes and meal as stuffing failed to recommend him.
He then determined to become a soldier, but the colonel of the regiment in which he desired to enlist persuaded him-Carleton had applied in Latin:-to give up the idea.
In 1830 appeared the first series of Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (2 vols. ).
Fardorougha the Miser, or the Convicts of Lisnamona " appeared in 1837-1838 in the Dublin University Magazine.
Among his other famous novels are: Valentine McClutchy, the Irish Agent, or Chronicles of the Castle Cumber Property (3 vols. , 1845); The Black Prophet, a Tale of the Famine, in the Dublin University Magazine (1846), printed separately in the next year; The Emigrants of Ahadarra (1847); Willy Reilly and his dear Colleen Bawn (in The Independent, London, 1850); and The Tithe Proctor (1849), the violence of which did his reputation harm among his own countrymen.
Dublin, on the 30th of January 1869.
Carleton's best work is contained in the Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry.
He wrote from intimate acquaintance with the scenes he described; and he drew with a sure hand a series of pictures of peasant life, unsurpassed for their appreciation of the passionate tenderness of Irish home life, of the buoyant humour and the domestic virtues which would, under better circumstances, bring prosperity and happiness.
He alienated the sympathies of many Irishmen, however, by his unsparing criticism and occasional exaggeration of the darker side of Irish character.
