William Chaigneau, The History of Jack Connor

Ian Campbell Ross (Trinity College Dublin)

Ed. by Anne Markey, Dublin City University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.4: Irish Writing and Culture, 400-present.
Vol. editors: Paul Delaney (Trinity College Dublin), Anne Markey (Dublin City University), Ian Campbell Ross (Trinity College Dublin), Sinéad Sturgeon (Queen's University Belfast)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1752

Places

Ireland, Republic of (Eire) (Country of Origin; Publication/ performance)
United Kingdom (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Novel
Picaresque

Resources

William Chaigneau’s only novel was first published, in London and Dublin, in 1752. Highly praised by Ralph Griffith in The Monthly Review (June 1752), Jack Connor went into second London and Dublin editions in 1753, with revisions by the author, with a further Dublin edition following in 1766. A sentimental picaresque fiction, it reveals, sometimes explicitly, the high regard in which Chaigneau held such recent fiction as Alain-René Lesage’s Gil Blas (1715-47), Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random (1748) and, especially, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749). Jack Connor, though, looks forward as well as backwards. The novel has two formal features particularly worthy of remark. It is …

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1243 words

Citation: Ross, Ian Campbell. "The History of Jack Connor". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 July 2014 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35471, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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