This chapter explores how three major nineteenth-century English literary figures lived, perceived and wrote about the troubled relationship between England and Ireland. Describing their collective belief in the Union, the chapter seeks to place the writers politically in terms of their ideas about Ireland as expressed in their fiction, their journalism and their private correspondence. They are shown to have flirted with the liberal agenda for Ireland but essentially, following Edmund Burke, can be seen to have adopted increasingly conservative (and anti-Gladstonian) positions - favouring coercion before concession - as they grew older and as the spectre of Home Rule became more real in the closing decades of the century.

This chapter reflects on the implications of censorship for writers working after 1940, first, by questioning the extent to which its imposition hampered the expression of a modern literary generation, and second, by exploring the strategies through which it was sidestepped and transgressed by both writers and readers in this period. It considers both the cultural implications of domestic censorship for Irish writers between 1940 and 1980, and the means that existed for circumventing the policing of ‘foreign’ literature. It highlights the pervasive effects of censorship across the middle decades of the century. First, the focus is on Kate O’Brien, Seán O’Faoláin and Frank O’Connor, all born before independence, who found themselves directly at odds with the country they had seen created. Faced with the banning of their own books, they battled to resist official strictures of their work. It then considers a subsequent generation of writers – including Edna O’Brien, Leland Bardwell, John Montague, John McGahern and Julia O’Faoláin – born during a period in which censorship had already become embedded within Irish literary culture. Finally, this chapter concludes by examining the experience of Colm Tóibín, who grew up in the 1950s, when censorship was still a dominant force.