The Life of William Carleton. Being His Autobiography and Letters; And An Account of His Life and Writings, From the Point at Which the Autobiography Breaks Off. With an Introduction by Mrs. Cashel Hoey. Two Volumes. London: Downey, 1896. First Edition. Pp (1) lxiv, 289, [3]; (2) viii, 362; pages unopened. Green cloth boards, covers with decorative borders in black, title lettered in gilt to spines. A nice bright set.

Frontispiece portrait sketch of Carleton aged 46 to volume one & frontispiece photograph of the author aged 72 to volume two.

W.B. Yeats described the author William Carleton (1794-1869) as ‘a great Irish historian’. According to Yeats, ‘the history of a nation is not in parliaments and battlefields but in what the people say to each other on fair-days and high days, and in how they farm, and quarrel, and go on pilgrimage’, and these were the things that Carleton recorded.