Author Biography
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna (nee Brown) (1790-1846) was an English evangelical writer and follower of the playwright and religious writer Hannah More. She was well known in her lifetime for her novels and religious tracts. Patrick Maume is a researcher with the Dictionary of Irish Biography.
Description
'To be sure I hated Ireland most cordially; I had never seen it, and as a matter of choice would have preferred New South Wales, so completely was I influenced by the prevailing prejudice against that land of barbarism!' Thus Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna recalled in her memoirs her view of Ireland as she had set off for that country in 1818. But she came to love Ireland, so much so that after her death her grave was planted with shamrocks. In this abridged version of the second edition of Personal Recollections (1847), Tonna gives a vivid account of her time in Ireland, of the violent activities of the Rockite movement in the mid-1820s in Kilkenny-Tipperary, and of the apocalyptic ultra-Evangelical 'siege mentality' during the Tithe War and the run-up to Catholic Emancipation. It is also a valuable memoir of her religious and literary development,
Introduction by Patrick Maume
Letter V Ireland
Letter VI Religious progress
Letter VII Kilkenny
Letter VIII The workings of Popery
Letter IX The dumb boy
Letter X England
Letter XI Sandhurst
Letter XII Separation
Letter XIII National apostacy
Letter XIV Employment
Letter XV Darkness and light
Letter XVI A removal
Letter XVII Ireland.
"University College Dublin Press has now published over thirty ‘Classics of Irish History'. These contemporary accounts by well known personalities of historical events and attitudes have an immediacy that conventional histories do not have. Introductions by modern historians provide additional historical background and, with hindsight, objectivity."
Books Ireland
Nov 2007
"the re-publication of Tonna's Personal Recollections, edited, introduced and re-titled by Patrick Maume as Irish Recollections, should be welcomed by scholars of Irish history and literature. Moreover, Tonna's writing should also prove valuable to those people who have an interest in the complicated interplay of gender, religion, and empire. Ultimately, the presence of Tonna among such renowned figures of Irish history is exciting and should be considered something of a victory both for feminist literary critics and feminist historians."
Irish Studies Review
13 (4) 2005
"Scholars of nineteenth-century Irish and Irish-American politics should reacquaint themselves with these classics, part of a long running and immensely useful series from University College Dublin Press.
Patrick Maume has edited and written the introductions for no less than nine of the books in this series, lending them his breadth of knowledge and keen analysis that have made him one of the most learned and intellectually generous young scholars in the field."
Irish Literary Supplement
Fall 2008
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