Lady Morgan, Mother of the Irish Historical Novel ?

Abstract

Lady Morgan published her first historical novel in 1805. This novel, The Novice of Saint Dominick, was located in France at the time of the wars of religion. As early as 1 806 she published her first « patriotic » novel, The Wild Irish Girl, which was to make her famous and to be followed by several others in which the weight of Irish history was becoming more and more considerable. It was with The O'Briens and the O 'Flaherty s (1827) that Lady Morgan eventually gave the public a genuine Irish historical novel characterised by an integration of fiction and history. It is this evolution of her writing technique towards a satisfactory integration of the two main ingredients of the historical novel that this article tries to study.