Oliver MacDonagh – författare

In this book a distinguished historian explores the novels of Jane Austen, showing how they illuminate English history in the quarter century before 1792 and 1817 and how, in turn, an appreciation of this period in history enriches our reading of the novels. Oliver MacDonagh paints a picture of Jane Austen’s life and personality and of the social and political worlds she inhabited during and immediately after the Napoleonic Wars. Analyzing her letters as well as her novels, he shows how Austen’s experiences and her reactions to events were woven into her fiction.  Each chapter combines an examination of Jane Austen’s ideas and conduct in a particular field with a consideration of her treatment of the same subject in one or more of her works. MacDonagh compares the place of the Anglican Church in her life to the role of the Church of England in Mansfield Park, juxtaposes her own family relations to those of the Elliots, Musgroves, and Crofts in Persuasion, and shows how her economic vicissitudes are reflected in the use of money as the moving force in Sense and Sensibility. In the same way, other chapters tackle the themes of girlhood and education, marriage and the contemporary female economy, and local society. In every case Austen’s real and imagined worlds richly illuminate on another, providing new insights for all readers of her work.

The Irish contribution to Australian history goes both deep and wide. Originally published in 1986 the essays in this collection contribute both to the understanding of Ireland’s place in Australian history and to the interpretation of the Irish scene in the nineteenth century. Ranging from law to W. B. Yeats, and from monumental sculpture to violence and crime, the papers reflect the diversity of the Irish-Australian experience and the persistence of a distinctively Irish culture even when transported across the world.

The Irish contribution to Australian history goes both deep and wide. Originally published in 1986 the essays in this collection contribute both to the understanding of Ireland’s place in Australian history and to the interpretation of the Irish scene in the nineteenth century. Ranging from law to W. B. Yeats, and from monumental sculpture to violence and crime, the papers reflect the diversity of the Irish-Australian experience and the persistence of a distinctively Irish culture even when transported across the world.

Sir Jeremiah Fitzpatrick (c.1740-1810) was the first inspector general of prisons and lunacy inspector in Ireland and the first and only inspector of health to HM land forces in Great Britain. He also inspected convict vessels bound for New South Wales and the East India Company‘s troop ships, inquired into the Irish Charter Schools and attempted to alleviate the miseries of soldiers’ dependents. His further ambitions ranged from a poor law for Ireland to a reorganisation of Dublin’s police, to the regulation of noxious trades, from slave trade inspectorates to hospital management. He was therefore in many ways a precursor of the titans of early and mid-Victorian government. Originally published in 1981, much of the interest of the book lies in its revelation of late eighteenth century anticipations of mid-nineteenth century government. It also explores the differences between the two forms of administration and the reasons for the divergences and discontinuities.

Sir Jeremiah Fitzpatrick (c.1740-1810) was the first inspector general of prisons and lunacy inspector in Ireland and the first and only inspector of health to HM land forces in Great Britain. He also inspected convict vessels bound for New South Wales and the East India Company‘s troop ships, inquired into the Irish Charter Schools and attempted to alleviate the miseries of soldiers’ dependents. His further ambitions ranged from a poor law for Ireland to a reorganisation of Dublin’s police, to the regulation of noxious trades, from slave trade inspectorates to hospital management. He was therefore in many ways a precursor of the titans of early and mid-Victorian government. Originally published in 1981, much of the interest of the book lies in its revelation of late eighteenth century anticipations of mid-nineteenth century government. It also explores the differences between the two forms of administration and the reasons for the divergences and discontinuities.

Originally published in 1983 and slightly revised in 1985, joint winner of the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize, States of Mind is an exploration of the ideas underlying Anglo-Irish conflict over the past two centuries. This is a book about nationalism and colonialism and above all about political ideology. The ideology is popular, to be inferred from behaviour rather than found in treatises. Often it was, and is, expressed in images and slogans. The resultant cross-purposes and double meanings, ambiguity and dualism are characteristic of cultural collision and accommodation generally. This book throws light upon a very wide range of modern history, and not just upon the relations of one particular metropolitan power and its dependency. The definition and treatment of the subject, as well as the conclusions, are strikingly novel.

Originally published in 1983 and slightly revised in 1985, joint winner of the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize, States of Mind is an exploration of the ideas underlying Anglo-Irish conflict over the past two centuries. This is a book about nationalism and colonialism and above all about political ideology. The ideology is popular, to be inferred from behaviour rather than found in treatises. Often it was, and is, expressed in images and slogans. The resultant cross-purposes and double meanings, ambiguity and dualism are characteristic of cultural collision and accommodation generally. This book throws light upon a very wide range of modern history, and not just upon the relations of one particular metropolitan power and its dependency. The definition and treatment of the subject, as well as the conclusions, are strikingly novel.

This book is a selection of historian Oliver MacDonagh’s writings edited and introduced by his former student, Tom Dunne, who contibutes an account of MacDonagh’s career and a bibliography. It brings together a series of childhood memories of a bank manager’s son in 1930s Roscommon, with reflections on a lifetime spent writing several different kinds of history, in Ireland, England and Australia. Oliver MacDonagh was a significant writer as well as a distinguished historian, his work marked by a sophistication of style and intellect. As Roy Foster remarks in his preface, ‘Oliver MacDonagh was a great scholar, and a good deal more.’ He is best known in Ireland for States of Mind: A Study of Anglo-Irish Conflict, 1780-1980, which won the Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize in 1985, and for his two volume biography of Daniel O’Connell. He earned a major international reputation for his studies of early-nineteenth century government, as well as for an important book on the novels of Jane Austen. Few historians have paid as much attention as MacDonagh to the importance of style, and this is reflected in all the elements of this book. It ends with his tribute to John Henry Newman’s Apologia pro Vita Sua, a book that had been with me as a schoolboy, that had helped to shape me then, and since’.