William Carleton epitomised the search by nineteenth century Irish writers for a national identity. He spoke in the voice of the Irish peasant and was heard all over the literary world. His books, from the early collection Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (1830) to the late novel Willy Reilly (1855), were tremendously popular, running into many editions in Ireland, England and America. He revised, retitled, and regrouped his works frequently, producing a rich yet confusing body of work, which is fully explored and identified in the first part of this work, the first complete bibliography to have been compiled of the works of William Carleton. Carleton's work has long awaited a bibliographer, and Dr. Hayley gives it the full, detailed and illuminating treatment it deserves. It is absolutely essential for everyone studying or collecting his works.

Likened to Dickens, Cervantes and Turgenev, and described as "rising like a mountain over the men of his time, " Carleton was the first great fictional chronicler of the Irish people. That his writings succeeded in offending "every class of Irishmen" indicated the sometimes brutal candor with which he went about his work. This 1968 unfinished autobiography covers the first 28 rich, difficult years of his life, taking him from an idyllic childhood in the Clogher valley to a bed of rags and straw in Dublin, from which, equipped with only his genius and a powerful sense of destiny, the young Carleton went out upon the world.

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