The Ned M'Keown Stories by William Carleton, Fiction, Classics, Literary 12+

📘 William Carleton was an Irish novelist, and one of fourteen children of a tenant farmer. Carleton's early life resembled what he later described in his books. His father had an extraordinary memory and a thorough acquaintance with Irish folklore, which Carleton drew upon in later works. He became regarded as one of the great Irish novelists, and a master chronicler of the lives and character on the Irish people. Careleton's stories are the trials of common people, told in their own words, full of the sense of time and place that marked his stories.Ned's preferred abode is the public house, till his spouse comes with the servants to fetch him: "And then you might see Ned between the two servants, a few paces in advance of Nancy, having very much the appearance of a man performing a pilgrimage to the gallows, or of a deserter guarded back to his barrack, in order to become a target for the muskets of his comrades." Ned and his neighbors are larger than life, but all too human.