By Claire Connolly

What does ‘Irish romanticism’ mean and when did Ireland become romantic?

How does Irish romanticism differ from the literary culture of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, and what qualities do they share?

Claire Connolly proposes an understanding of romanticism as a temporally and aesthetically distinct period in Irish culture, during which literature flourished in new forms and styles, evidenced in the lives and writings of such authors as Thomas Dermody, Mary Tighe, Maria Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, Thomas Moore, Charles Maturin, John Banim, Gerald Griffin, William Carleton and James Clarence Mangan.