Literature

The most celebrated author from this area was Louis MacNeice, who has been called “the major Irish poet after Yeats.”  Born in Belfast in 1907, he moved to Carrickfergus while still a baby.  His father, John MacNeice, was a Church of Ireland minister, who later became Bishop of Down and Dromore.  Louis was educated at Marlborough, and at Merton College, Oxford, where he read Classics and Philosophy.  In the 1930s, he was closely associated with W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, who were known as radical, anti-fascist campaigners.  His best known poem was Autumn Journal, published in 1939, brilliantly evoking the period leading up to the Second World War.  One of his most popular poems was Bagpipe Music, in which he writes sardonic social commentary, while mimicking the rhythms of the bagpipes.  After some years as a university lecturer, he had a long career at the B.B.C., where he produced numerous features, and wrote some noteworthy radio plays.  In his poem Carrickfergus, he wrote of his native town:

“Thence to smoky Carrickfergus in county Antrim
Where the bottle-neck harbour collects the mud which jams
The little boats beneath the Norman castle
The pier shining with lumps of crystal salt”

Sir Samuel Ferguson, whose family home in Newtownabbey, called The Throne, was near where the Throne Hospital was later built, was one of the most celebrated Irish authors of the nineteenth century.  He was a crucial figure in the development of the Celtic Twilight, the literary renaissance, inspired by Ireland's legendary past, which made a major contribution to English literature.  William Butler Yeats wrote of him “Sir Samuel Ferguson, I contend, is the greatest Irish poet, because in his poems and the legends, they embody more completely than in any other man's writings, the Irish character”.  His best known works were Comgall and Deirdre, both inspired by Irish history and legends.  He was also an antiquarian and scholar, who became President of the Royal Irish Academy in 1882.  His manuscripts are held in the Linen Hall Library.

Charles Lever was one of the most popular nineteenth-century writers, referred to by Elizabeth Barrett Browning as “the famous Irish Lever.”  He was a medical practitioner before he became a novelist, and lived in Portstewart for four and a half years, elected in 1832 as attendant at the Medical Dispensary, at a salary of £60.  His appointment coincided with a cholera epidemic, which affected Coleraine and Derry, though Portstewart was spared.  Lever took charge of the fever hospital in Derry, and was heavily involved in dealing with this outbreak, which killed over a hundred people.  While living in Portstewart, Lever began the first of his bestselling novels, Harry Lorrequer.  Four of his subsequent novels were set on the Causeway Coast.

Amanda McKittrick Ross, who lived in Larne for many years, being the wife of the stationmaster wrote some extremely entertaining novels which are now regarded as comic masterpieces.  Some of her milder terms for the critics were “mushroom class of idiotics”, and “scribblers of thick-witted type”.  In her lifetime, clubs were formed by her admirers, where they would meet and exchange quotations from her works. C. S. Lewis and his Oxford friends would hold competitions to see who could read from her works the longest without laughing.  

A poetess, whose works have given pleasure to many people and illustrate her intense love of the Glens of Antrim, was Moira O'Neill.  She wrote dialect poems about country people, but came in fact from a big house, Anglo-Irish background.  Her real name was Agnes Shakespeare Higginson, she lived for some years at Rockport Cushendun, and she was the mother of the novelist Molly Keane.

Patrick Boyle, from Ballymoney, did not publish anything until the age of sixty, but quickly established a formidable reputation.  Best known for his short stories, he also produced a remarkable novel Like any other man, which retells the story of Samson and Delilah, with Samson reinvented as a bank manager, Patrick Boyle's own profession.  Two poets from this area are Derek Mahon, from Glengormley, a major lyric poet who stands comparison with Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley as one of the North's leading poets.  Mebh McGuckian, whose family came from Ballycastle, is unquestionably the most important female poet from Northern Ireland.

One group of writers, neglected until recently but rediscovered by the poet John Hewitt, are the Rhyming Weavers, country poets of Antrim and Down, who wrote in the Scots vernacular, and usually printed their own books, the costs of printing paid by local subscribers.  Hewitt lived for some time in the Glens.  Much of their work is reminiscent of Robert Burns, but they were not imitating him, but writing in their own natural speech.  James Orr of Ballycarry was the leading poet in this group, other noteworthy figures being Samuel Thomson of Lyle's Hill, James Campbell of Ballynure, and Thomas Beggs of Ballyclare.  The most prolific of the weaver poets was David Herbison, the Bard of Dunclug, who wrote from sad experience about the decline of linen as a domestic industry, and its replacement by the factory system.  John Hewitt himself, though not from the area, has written much about the Glens.  He believed strongly in regional identity, and became a kind of father figure of Ulster poetry in his latter years.

Mention should also be made of Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels and the greatest satirist in the English language, although his connection with this area was not a happy one.  In 1695, his first post after being ordained as a Church of Ireland minister was at Kilroot, near Carrickfergus.  He found this a frustrating appointment, as most people in the district were Presbyterians, and his church building was in ruins.  He consoled himself with the friendship of Jane Waring, whose family gave its name to Waringstown.  Swift gave Jane the poetic name of Varina, and he proposed marriage, but she turned him down. 

Fear Flatha Ó Gnimh was an eminent gaelic poet at the end 16^th early 17^th century during the Early Modern or Classical Modern period in Irish language and literature. Like many of the professional poets' verse at that time, poetry consisted of eulogies to their aristocratic patrons, but there was also a substantial body of extant religious and personal poetry.

Dr James McDonnel (1762-1845) attended a “hedge” school in a cave at Red Bay, Cushendall, and went to Belfast where he became a distinguished antiquarian, man-of-letters and pioneer in medicine.

George, Earl Macartney of Lissanoure, Loughgiel (1737-1806) British Ambassador to Russia, first British Ambassador to China and Governor of the Cape of Good Hope.

Randal John mc Neill, Lord Cushendun (1861-1934) who lived at Glenmona, Cushendun, and held a number of positions in the British Cabinet. He was Britain's' representative at the League of Nations for a time and acted as Foreign Secretary in 1928.