This is the first study of Irish improvement fiction, a neglected genre of nineteenth-century literary, social, and political history. It shows how the fiction of Mary Leadbeater, Charles Bardin, Martin Doyle, and William Carleton attempted to lure the reader away from popular genres such as fantasy, romance, and "radical" political tracts by demonstrating the value of hard work, frugality, and sobriety in a rigorously realistic mode, representing the contentment that inheres in a plain social order free of excess and embellishment. Improvement discourse defined itself in opposition to the...