Centrally Peripheral, Peripherally Central: The “Prout Papers” of Francis Sylvester Mahony

This article reconsiders the pseudonymous essays Francis Sylvester Mahony (1804-66) (“Father Prout”) contributed to Fraser’s Magazine in the mid-1830s. It explores his seemingly anomalous position as a Catholic unionist writer in an avowedly Tory Protestant periodical and examines his vituperative repudiation of popular O’Connellite nationalism. It also evaluates Mahony’s aesthetic re-interpretation of William Maginn’s progressive Tory politics in relation to the competitive literary marketplace of post-Reform Bill London. In addition, it focuses on Mahony’s skilful negotiation of opposing metropolitan and peripheral perspectives and his ironic reworking of the crisis of representation in British and Irish literature during the 1830s.