Professor Andrew Carpenter

Andrew Carpenter (b. 1943) was educated at Oxford University (BA 1963, MA 1968) and at University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1970). From 1964-65 he taught English in Portugal and from 1965-67 was an Instructor in English at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. In 1970 he joined the full-time teaching staff of the English Department at University College Dublin as a College Lecturer; he was promoted to the rank of Senior Lecturer in 1980, Associate Professor in 1998 and Professor in 2006. He retired from UCD in 2008. He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and a Fellow of the English Association.

Professor Carpenter served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts at UCD from 1987 to 1992 and as Director of Development from 1992 to 1994. He was a member of the UCD Governing Body from 1988 to 1994. As Dean and as member of the Governing Body, he served on many college and university committees including the Council of Deans and the Board of Studies of the National University of Ireland. He was Chairman of the UCD Examinations Appeals Board for several years and also Head of the School of English, Drama and Film. Andrew Carpenter has lectured on Anglo-Irish poetry, particularly that written in Ireland between 1580 and 1800, all over Ireland and in universities from Oxford to Melbourne: he has been visiting professor at universities in the United States and Italy and has delivered papers at conferences in many countries.

He has served on several international scholarly bodies and was the first secretary (1970-73) of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literature (IASIL). He was founding president of the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society and founding editor of its journal Eighteenth-Century Ireland. He is currently on the board of the Ehrenpreis Centre for the Study of Jonathan Swift (Muenster, Germany), and was until recently a member of the Executive Committee of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS) of which he was Senior Vice-President from 2007-2011. He was organizer of the Tenth World Congress of ISECS which took place at University College Dublin in July 1999. More than 1800 delegates from over 100 countries attended this extremely successful event, the largest humanities conference ever held in Ireland. 

Andrew Carpenter’s main scholarly interest is in poetry written in English in Ireland between 1550 and 1830 and he is a recognized expert on the work of Jonathan Swift. He also works on book history and has been associated with scholarly publishing through his series of ten volumes of Irish Texts from the Age of Swift (Cadenus Press, 1973-79) and through the publication of various scholarly texts and anthologies over the last thirty years. His most substantial anthologies are Verse in English from Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Cork University Press, 1998) and a companion volume, Verse in English from Tudor and Stuart Ireland (Cork University Press, 2003). 

Since his retirement from UCD, Andrew Carpenter has continued working and publishing in various fields of research. He has edited two volumes of manuscripts for the Irish Manuscripts Commission, Verse Travesty in Restoration Ireland: ‘Purgatorium Hibernicum’ and ‘The Fingallian Travesty’ (2013) and The Poems of Olivia Elder 1735-80 (2017). Working together, he and his wife, Lucy Collins, edited The Poems of Maurice Craig (2011) and produced The Irish Poet and the Natural World: an anthology of verse in English from the Tudors to the Romantics (2014). He was General Editor of the five-volume Art and Architecture of Ireland, published in 2014 by the Royal Irish Academy and Yale University Press, and is working on an anthology of English-language poems from Ireland on the subject of women. He has also produced a substantial, annotated bibliography of Irish poetry in English before 1800, published electronically by Oxford University Press (New York) and published many articles and chapters in books. He is a member of the Council of the Royal Irish Academy and serves on a number of its committees.

MA (Oxon), PhD (UCD), MRIA, FEA

ed. Miscellanies in Prose (Selections from the prose of Swift's contemporaries) (Dublin: Cadenus Press, 1972).

ed. My Uncle John: Edward Stephens's Life of J.M Synge (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).

ed. Miscellanies in Verse (Verse from the age of Swift with scholarly commentary) (Dublin: Cadenus Press, 1973).

ed. Letters to and from Persons of Quality (Correspondence from the manuscripts of early eighteenth-century politicians and churchmen living in Ireland) (Dublin: Cadenus Press, 1974).

ed. Archbishop King's Sermon on Predestination (Dublin: Cadenus Press, 1976).

ed. Place, Personality and the Irish Writer (Gerrards Cross and New York: Colin Smythe and Barnes and Noble Ltd., 1977). A volume of essays including an essay by the editor.

ed. Charles Ford's Adventure in Siena (Dublin: Cadenus Press, 1978). Edited from the manuscript of 1717.

The Irish Perspective of Jonathan Swift (Wuppertal: Peter Hammer, 1978). 

ed. (with Peter Fallon) The Writers: A Sense of Ireland (Dublin: O'Brien Press, 1980). New work by 44 Irish writers. 

ed. Eight Irish Writers (Dublin: 1981). 

The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, General Editor Seamus Deane, Associate Editor Andrew Carpenter, 3 vols, (Derry, London and New York: Field Day Publications, Faber and Faber, W.W.Norton) (joint editorship).

Verse in English from Eighteenth-Century Ireland, selected, edited and introduced by Andrew Carpenter (Cork: Cork University Press, 1998) 626 pages. 

The Dublin Scuffle (1699) by John Dunton, edited with an introduction and notes by Andrew Carpenter (Dublin: Four Courts Press /National Library of Ireland, 2000). 350 pages.

Verse in English from Tudor and Stuart Ireland selected, edited and introduced by Andrew Carpenter (Cork : Cork University Press, 2003), 598 pages. 

Teague Land: or A Merry Ramble to the Irish Wild (1698) by John Dunton, transcribed from the manuscript, edited and introduced by Andrew Carpenter (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003) 190 pages.

Oral and Print Cultures in Ireland 1600-1900 edited by Marc Caball and Andrew Carpenter (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010) 144 pages. (Joint editorship).

Poems of Maurice Craig edited by Andrew Carpenter and Lucy Collins (Dublin: Liberties Press, 2011) 72 pages. (Joint editorship).

The 'Purgatorium Hibernicum' with 'The Fingallian Travesty', transcribed and edited by Andrew Carpenter (Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 2013). 240 pp.

The Irish poet and the Natural World: an anthology of verse in English from the Tudors to the Romantics edited by Andrew Carpenter and Lucy Collins (joint editorship), (Cork: Cork University Press, 2014). 434 pp.

Art and Architecture of Ireland, 5 vols. General Editor Andrew Carpenter. (Dublin, London and New Haven: Yale University Press for the Royal Irish Academy, 2014). 2938 pp. 

The Poems of Olivia Elder transcribed and edited by Andrew Carpenter (Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 2017)

Reading Women: an anthology of verse about women from pre-famine Ireland eds. Andrew Carpenter and Lucy Collins (forthcoming, 2020)

Eighteenth-Century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr vol I, scholarly journal founded and edited by Andrew Carpenter (Dublin: 1986).

Eighteenth-Century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr vol II, edited by Andrew Carpenter (Dublin: 1987).

"On a manuscript of poems catalogued as by Mary Barber in the Library of T.C.D." Hermathena. cix. (1969) 54-64.

"William King and the threats to the Church of Ireland during the reign of James II" Irish Historical Studies, xviii, no.69 (1972), 22-28. 

"Archbishop King and Swift's appointment as Dean of St. Patrick's" Long Room: the journal of the Friends of the Library of T.C.D., 11, Spring/Summer 1975, 11-14. 

"Double vision in Anglo-Irish literature" in Place, Personality and the Irish Writer edited by Andrew Carpenter (Gerrards Cross and New York: Colin Smythe and Barnes and Noble, 1977), 173-89. 

"Swift and Politics" Gaeliana (Université de Caen), 1979, 63- 71. 

"Synge and Women" Études Irlandaises, December 1979, 98-106. 

"Making the academic buy" Scholarly Publishing (Toronto) April 1980, 203-212. 

"Swift's 'O'Rourke's Feast' and Sheridan's 'Letter': early transcripts by Anthony Raymond" by Andrew Carpenter and Alan Harrison in Proceedings of the first Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift edited by Hermann J. Real and Heinz J. Vienken, (Munich: Wilhelm Fink: 1985), 27-46 (joint authorship).

"Swift, Raymond and a legacy" by Andrew Carpenter and Alan Harrison, Swift Studies I, (1986), 57-60 (joint authorship). 

"The study of Anglo-Irish literature in Ireland: problems of definition, perspective and text" in Literatures in English: new perspectives edited by Wolfgang Zach (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1990), pp.161-68. 

"The Early Planters: Spenser and his Contemporaries" edited by Nicholas Canny and Andrew Carpenter in Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (1991) I, 171-234 (joint editorship).

"Ireland and her past: topographical and historical writing to 1690" edited by Andrew Carpenter and Alan Harrison in Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (1991) I, 235-273 (joint editorship). 

"Jonathan Swift" edited by Andrew Carpenter in Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (1991) I, 327-394.

"Eighteenth-century Irish Philosophy" edited by David Berman and Andrew Carpenter in Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (1991) I, 760-806 (joint editorship).

"Political Prose: Cromwell to O'Connell" edited by Andrew Carpenter, Seamus Deane and W.J. Mc Cormack in Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (1991) I, 855-960 (joint editorship). 

"The Shifting Perspective 1690-1830" edited by Andrew Carpenter and Seamus Deane in Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (1991) I, 961-1010 (joint editorship). 

"Changing views of Irish musical and literary culture in eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish literature" in Irish Literature and Culture edited by Michael Kenneally (Gerrards Cross and New York: Colin Smythe and Barnes and Noble, 1992), pp. 5-24. 

"The effect of Anglican liturgy on the young Jonathan Swift" Transactions of the Ninth International Congress on the Enlightenment (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1996).

"Peculiar Pastorals: Swift, Delany and Orrery in The Ulster Miscellany" in Swift: The Enigmatic Dean, ed. Rudolf Freiburg, Arno Löffler and Wolfgang Zach, Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 1998, pp. 15-26.

"From Ulster to Delaware: Two Poems by James Orr about an Eighteenth-Century Emigrant Voyage" in New Perspectives on the Irish Diaspora, ed. Charles Fanning, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000, pp. 65-74.

"A Collection of Verse presented to James Butler, First Duke of Ormonde", The Yale University Library Gazette, vol. 75, numbers 1-2, October 2000, pp. 64-70.

"A School for a Satirist: Swift's Exposure to the Wars of Words in Dublin in the 1680s", in Reading Swift: Papers from the Fourth Münster Symposium on Jonothan Swift edited by Herman J. Real and Helgard Stöver-Leidig (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2003) pp. 161-76

Introduction to Sybil le Brocquy, Cadenus and Swift's Most Valuable Friend (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2003), pp. viii-xxii.

“Natural Journey”, Cork Literary Review vol 8, (2003) 75-89.

“Lost and Found: tracing items from a collection of verse presented to James Butler, first duke of Ormonde”, The Butler Journal, vol 4 no 3 (2003) pp. 479-490.

“Sectarianism in Marsh’s Ireland: some literary evidence” in The Making of Marsh’s Library: Learning, politics and religion in Ireland 1650-1750 eds. Muriel McCarthy and Ann Simmons, (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), pp. 187-208.

“Virgil Travesty in Restoration Ireland: some preliminary notes on an unexplored literary phenomenon”, in From ‘English Literature’ to ‘Literatures in English’: International Perspectives. A Festschrift in honour of Wolfgang Zach eds. Michael Kenneally and Rhona Richman Kenneally, (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2005) pp. 53-66.

“A Tale of a Tub as an Irish text”, Swift Studies 20 (2005), pp. 30-40.

“Two early printed squibs from Cork” in That Woman: Studies in Irish Bibliography: a Festscrift for Mary ‘Paul’ Pollard, eds. Charles Benson and Siobhan Fitzpatrick, (Dublin: Lilliput Press for the Library Association of Ireland, 2005) pp. 163-74.

“Circulating ideas: coteries, groups and the circulation of verse in English in early modern Ireland”, in Print Culture and Intellectual Life in Ireland 1660-1941: Essays in honour of Michael Adams eds. Martin Fanning and Raymond Gillespie (Dublin: The Woodfield Press, 2006), pp. 1-24.

“Literature in Print, 1550-1800” in The Oxford History of the Irish Book, volume III: The Irish Book in English 1550-1800, eds Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) pp. 301-18.

“Poetry in English, 1690-1800: from the Williamite wars to the Act of Union, in The Cambridge History of Irish Literature eds. Margaret Kelleher and Philip O’Leary, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 2 vols) I, 282-319.

“Parnell and Early Eighteenth-Century Irish Poetry” in A Companion to Irish Literature ed. Julia M. Wright 2 vols. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) I, 142-160.

“A Verse Confrontation in late eighteenth-century Ireland”. Eighteenth-Century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr Vol 25, 2010, pp. 33-47.

“Garbling and jumbling: printing from dictation in eighteenth-century Limerick” in Oral and Print Cultures in Ireland 1600-1900 eds. Marc Caball and Andrew Carpenter. (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010) pp. 32-46.

“Virile Vernaculars: Radical Sexuality as Social Subversion in Irish Chapbook Verse 1780-1820” in United Islands? The Languages of Resistance eds. John Kirk, Andrew Noble and Michael Brown. (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012) pp. 141-52.

'Befuddled in three languages: the readers of the 'Purgatorium Hibernicum' (c.1670)', in  Ilteangach, Ilseiftiúil: a festschrift in honour of Nicholas Williams eds. Liam Mac Amhlaigh and Brian Ó Curnáin, (Dublin: Arlen House, 2012), pp. 49-68. 

‘Reading Swift’s Works in Dublin in the 1750s’ in ‘“The first wit of the age”: Essays on Swift and his Contemporaries in Honour of Hermann J. Real, eds. Kirsten Juhas, Patrick Müller and Mascha Hansen, (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013) pp. 117-131. 

‘The Birds and the Bees: Ecopoetry in Swift’s Irish Circle’ in Reading Swift: Papers from the Sixth Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift, eds. Kirsten Juhas, Hermann J. Real and Sandra Simon, (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2013), pp. 351-364.

[Joint publication]. Andrew Carpenter and James Woolley, ‘Faulkner’s Volume II: Containing the Author’s Poetical Works: a new uncancelled copy’ in ed. Janika Bischof, Reading Swift: Papers from the Seventh Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2018) pp. 43-54.

‘Working-Class Writing in Ireland before 1800: “Some must be poor – we cannot all be great”’ in A History of Irish Working-Class Writing ed. Michael Pierse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) pp. 72-88.

‘Katherine Philips, “Philo-Philippa” and Restoration Dublin’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland/Iris an dá Chultúr vol. 33, 2018 (forthcoming 2018).

‘Swift and song’ in The Oxford Handbook of Irish Song 1100-1850 ed. Moyra Haslett, (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2019).

‘Land and landscape in Irish poetry in English 1700-1780’ in The Cambridge History of Irish Literature in Transition, Volume One, 1700-1780 ed. Moyra Haslett (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2019).

‘Lawyers and the circulation of verse in Restoration Ireland’ in ed. Coleman Dennehy Law and Lawyers in Early Modern Ireland (forthcoming, 2019).

‘Olivia Elder’ in Missing Voices: Irish women poets 1800-2000 ed. Maria Johnston (forthcoming, 2019).

‘Ulster-Scots poetry’ in Women’s Poetry from Ireland, Scotland and Wales 1400-1800: an anthology eds. Marie-Louise Coolahan, Sarah Dunnigan, Wes Hamrick, Kate Mathis, Sarah Prescott and Cathryn A. Charnell-White, (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2020).

‘Olivia Elder’ in Women’s Poetry from Ireland, Scotland and Wales 1400-1800: an anthology eds. Marie-Louise Coolahan, Sarah Dunnigan, Wes Hamrick, Kate Mathis, Sarah Prescott and Cathryn A. Charnell-White, (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2020).

Online bibliography

‘Anglo-Irish Poetry 1500-1800’ in Oxford Bibliographies in British and Irish Literature ed. Andrew Hadfield (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016) www.oxfordbibliographies.com

Online Article

‘Verse in English from Spenser to Swift’ in Literature Compass special issue: Literary Cultures of early modern Ireland (2018) eds. Ruth Connolly and Naomi McAreavey, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com