ABSTRACT
The son of poor Ulster farmers, Carleton was sporadically educated by itinerant masters in impromptu schoolrooms. He had hoped for the prestige and education of the priesthood, but spent his youth as a wandering storyteller and schoolmaster. In Dublin, he quickly achieved fame as a writer of short stories and novels, although his large family and improvident habits kept him impoverished throughout his life. Consequently, he wrote for periodicals which ranged from the hysterically anti-Catholic to the radically nationalist. Fantasy, comedy, and folk tale enrich Traits and Stories and his serial fiction, while his best novels chronicle in harrowing detail the effects of landlordism and famine.
