This is the first modern scholarly edition of Florence Macarthy: An Irish Tale (1818). Owenson's seventh novel, it is the most sophisticated of her four 'national tales'. Owenson combined conventional romance plotlines with the political and social problems in Ireland, following the passing of the Act of Union in 1800.

"I long to study the purely national, purely natural character of an Irishwoman." When Horatio, the son of an English lord, is banished to his father's Irish estate as punishment for his dissipated ways, he goes off in search of adventure. On the wild west coast of Connaught he finds remnants of a romantic Gaelic past--a dilapidated castle, a Catholic priest, a deposed king and the king's lovely daughter Glorvina. In this setting and among these characters Horatio learns the history, culture, and language of a country he had once scorned, but he must do so in disguise, for his own English...