The complex and detailed nature of the textual variants and the number of editions featured here has necessitated the subdivision of this section into individual editions, ordered chronologically. Where different variants for the same word or phrase occur across multiple editions, cross references have been included.

Mrs S. C. Hall, Sketches of Irish Character, 1st edn, 2 vols (London: Frederick Westley & A. H. Davis, 1829).

Sketches of Irish Character was first published in 1829 in London, by Frederick Westley & A. H. Davis, in two small volumes without illustration. The eleven sketches which comprised this first series were:

Volume One: ‘Lilly O'Brien’, ‘Kelly the Piper’, ‘Captain Andy’, ‘Independence’, ‘Black Dennis’ and ‘Old Frank’.

Volume Two: ‘The Bannow Postman’, ‘Father Mike’, ‘Master Ben’, ‘Hospitality’ and ‘Peter the Prophet’.

Hall had already published three of her sketches: ‘Master Ben’ Black Dennis’ and ‘Independence’ in The Spirit and Manners of the Age: A Christian and Literary Miscellany, New Series, 2 vols (London: Westley and Davis, 1829) – a periodical strongly of Christian and Evangelical bent, edited by her husband Carter Hall.

The sketches tell of the lives of the local people of Bannow, County Wexford, where Mrs Hall spent her childhood and they take as their subject the people of the locality, chiefly the peasantry.

The edition contained this Introduction dedicated to Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855):

Introduction

The 1st edn 1829 contained an Introduction, below, dedicated to Mary Russell Mitford (1787–1855). In her Introduction, Hall inscribes the volumes to Mary Russell Mitford, claiming inspiration from her ‘delineations of English character’ in Our Village. She then praises the advantages of Bannow, ‘my native village’,

but, by emphasising its ancient history and its proximity to ‘Bag and Bun’, the site of Ireland's first invasion by Strongbow, she evokes memories of a less than peaceful time. She glances off the ‘nearly forgotten days’ of the Rebellion of 1798 and this mention disturbs any real possibility that the settled and calm world of Mitford may be found in Ireland.