With the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 came the rejuvenation of Irish publishing as self-assured writers produced ‘Trait upon Custom upon Legend upon Pastime of the Irish peasantry’. Published and republished between 1829 and 1876, the early decades of the appearance of Sketches of Irish Character were troubled ones in Irish literary history. Overshadowed by memories of the French Revolution and the rebellion of 1798, the Irish publishing market was in the doldrums, divided along opposing political and religious lines, with publications from both sides overladen with religious propaganda. Class also counted; the peasantry could not afford to buy books whilst the ascendancy and aspiring classes preferred to appear à la mode by buying popular English or Scottish journals, such as Blackwood's or Fraser's.

Contrarily, the English periodical press was in its heyday. Complex factors fed an appetite for all manner of literature on Irish issues. Technological innovation enabled cheaper publications, as did reductions in tax and stamp duties, while rapid industrialization allowed easier travel. Social unrest in Ireland, following a slump in demand for arable products, and political agitation for Catholic Emancipation attracted much attention in the media, focusing a spotlight on Irish issues. Ireland as a backdrop was almost de rigueur in the novel, with Rochester sending Jane Eyre to find employment in Connemara.

In her Introduction to the third revised edition of Sketches of Irish Character in 1844, Mrs Hall mentions straight away that her sketches are set in Bannow, ‘my native’ place’. She points out that, in this neighbourhood where the days of her childhood were spent, ‘there was, comparatively, none of the poverty and consequent wretchedness to be encountered unhappily elsewhere’. In later life, surveying the past from her home in Addlestone, Surrey, Hall recalls her childhood in Bannow which made such an indelible impression on her. Her claim that the ‘Firfield grass is not as green, as that which carpeted the meadows of Graige’ animates her declaration that ‘this district of the County of Wex-ford is superior to any other part of the south of Ireland’ and demonstrates an understandable bias to the locality of the baronies of Bargy and Forth which are especially fortunate; in their ‘natural advantages’.