DomainArticle in Journal
Title"Standish James O'Grady : between imperial romance and Irish revival"
AuthorMaume, Patrick
Journal TitleÉire-Ireland
Journal Vol34
Journal Vol Issue34:1-2
Publication Date2004
Start-End Page11 — 35
Number Of Pages25 p.
Era Covered1846 — 1928
LanguageEnglish
ISSN00132683
Subject Classification
Person As SubjectO'Grady, Standish James, 1846-1928
CountryIreland
NotesDiscusses the career and ideology of the late-Victorian Irish conservative journalist and publicist Standish James O'Grady, drawing on some newly-discovered journalism (including an address to a nationalist workingmen's club attempting to convince them that capitalists rather than landlords were their enemy, and a series of 1890s newspaper articles on Irish history). Argues that O'Grady's exaltation of heroic warrior values as exemplified by the heroes of ancient Ireland and his denunciations of commercial society reflect the tradition of "imperial romance" derived from Scott, with its ambivalent view of the tribal societies displaced by empire; compares this to his depiction of Elizabethan Ireland, in which the warriors on both sides are praised at the expense of Queen Elizabeth and her bureaucrats (including Robert Cecil - O'Grady's hostile portrayal of him reflects an Irish Unionist's suspicion of his descendant Lord Salisbury); argues that his futurist novel THE QUEEN OF THE WORLD describes a conflict between O'Grady's idealised view of the British Empire as it ought to be and his gloomy opinion of what it actually was; suggests that O'Grady's advocacy of an anti-capitalist alliance of labourer and aristocrat can be related to barrington Moore's theory of the social origins of fascism.
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