Childhood and the Early Irish Novel

This essay analyzes William Chaigneau’s The History of Jack Connor, a picaresque fiction for adults first published in London in 1752, and James Delap’s The History of Harry Spencer, a didactic story for children first published in Dublin in 1794. The varying constructions of childhood found in both texts generally mirror changing European attitudes to children while disclosing that the experience of childhood in Ireland was linked to the settlement history of the country, which resulted in a social order in which wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of the Protestant ascendancy. On an ideological level, the construction of childhood in these early Irish novels is concerned with reinforcing the hegemony of that ascendancy. Nevertheless, they also provide frequently verifiable insights into diverse, contemporaneous experiences of Irish childhood, illuminating issues including child poverty and the associated problem of begging, education in charity and Charter schools, and the availability of children’s books.