The education received by Carleton was of a very humble description. As his father removed from one small farm to another, he attended at various places the hedge-schools, which used to be a notable feature of Irish life. The admirable little picture of one of these schools in the Traits and Stories bears every mark of having been drawn from real experience. A smattering of some higher learning was picked up here and there as opportunity offered, and at the age of seventeen Carleton resolved to prosecute his education as a poor scholar. The resolution was not carried into effect; he remained at home, preparing to enter upon the training for the priesthood, and receiving the unbounded veneration of the neighbouring peasantry for his supposed wonderful learning. An amusing account of this phase of his existence is given in the little sketch Denis O' Shaughnessy. When about the age of nineteen he undertook one of the religious pilgrimages then common in Ireland. His experiences as a pilgrim were such as at a later period made him resign for ever the thought of entering the church. His vacillating ideas as to a mode of life were determined in a definite direction by the reading of Gil Blas, which chance had thrown in his way. He resolved to cast himself boldly upon the world, and try what fortune had in store for him. He went to Killanny, and for six months acted as tutor in a neighbouring farmer’s family. Soon tiring of this occupation, he set out for Dublin, and arrived in the metropolis with 2s. 9d. in his pocket. He began to contribute to the journals, and his paper “The Lough Derg Pilgrim,” which was published in the Christian Examiner, excited great attention. In 1830 appeared the first series of Traits and Stories of ths Irish Peasantry, which at once placed the author in the first rank of Irish novelists. A second series appeared in 1832, and was received with equal favour both in Ireland and in England. From that time till within a few years of his death Carleton’s literary activity was incessant. The best of his many productions are Far-darougha the Miser, perhaps on the whole the finest and most powerful of all his works; The Tithe Proctor; Valentine M i Clutehy ; The Blade Prophet ; The Emigrants of Ahadarra. Some of his later writings, such as The Squanders of Castle Squander, were not so successful as the earlier tales. The author was not happy in describing the upper classes of Irish society, and overloaded his work with political or semi-political matter.

Carleton is facile princeps among Irish novelists, and it is to his pages that one must look for an adequate picture of the peculiar Irish character. His style is clear, graphic, and pleasing; the plots of his stories are generally slight but well constructed. In his pictures of peasant life he is unsurpassed; the lights and shades of Irish character, the buoyant humour and domestic virtues that under other conditions would lead their possessors to prosperity and happiness, and the fatal flaws that seem to render it impossible for Ireland ever to become capable of selfgovernment, receive equal justice at his hands. He invariably writes from intimate acquaintance with the scenes described and from loving sympathy with the many good and noble elements in the Irish nature. He does not hesitate to point out the darker features of Irish life, nor to draw attention to the fatal system of education and priestly supremacy that did so much to produce them.

Carleton, after spending some years in America, settled in Dublin, where he died on the 30th January 1869. For many years before his death he had enjoyed a pension of £200 from the Crown.