Irish Fiction - The 18th Century

The 18th Century

Irish fiction can be said to begin with the publication in 1726 of Jonathan Swift's masterpiece Gulliver's Travels. This novel, often treated as a book for children, is one of the most savage satires in the English language and set a high standard for Irish writers to come.

The next Irish novelist of importance was Laurence Sterne (1713–1768). Stern was born in Clonmel, County Tipperary and was in his mid-forties when he published The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–1767). This satire on the biographical novel is one of the most innovative and influential novels in English, and its foregrounding of the authorial voice and playful refusal to accept a conventional linear timeframe mark it out as a precursor of such modernist novelists as James Joyce and Samuel Beckett.

Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) is a moral tale based on the story of Goldsmith's own family. It is notable for rejecting the florid style of most fiction of the day in favour of a more direct, conversational mode. Although not particularly successful when published, it has become one of the most enduring works of 18th-century fiction in English.