Getting Back to Ireland: Charles Lever’s Soldiers of Fortune, Tourists, and Irishmen in Reverse

Abstract

This essay explores how the “rambling Irishman” or “soldier of fortune” figure was used in the military tales of the mid-nineteenth century and by those writers burlesquing the form. Concentrating on the writings of Charles Lever, it looks at how he uses four different types of travelers to comment on Ireland and the Irish. This essay argues that the Irish soldier of fortune, often seen as a subversive, disruptive, and disreputable figure, was chiefly used by Lever to normalize the figure of the Irishman within British and Imperial society. Moreover, it maintains that when Lever wished to be critical of Ireland and the Irish character, he created an “Irishman in reverse,” as in the figure of a Frenchman of Irish extraction in Maurice Tiernay.