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Chapter 3 - The Optical Telegraph, the United Irish Press, and Maria Edgeworth’s ‘White Pigeon’

from Part I - Genealogies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2023

By
Joanna Wharton
Edited by
Margaret Kelleher  and
James O'Sullivan
Margaret Kelleher
Affiliation:
University College Dublin
James O'Sullivan
Affiliation:
University College Cork
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Summary

This chapter explores the cultural significance of the optical telegraph in Ireland. Following the institution of the Chappe télégraphe in revolutionary France, this long-distance communications technology was widely innovated and subsequently adopted by numerous governments including, briefly, the British administration at Dublin Castle. The chapter begins by discussing the promotion, in the Belfast Northern Star, of the telegraph designed by the ‘improving’ Ascendancy landlord, Richard Lovell Edgeworth. It then considers the politics of telegraphic discourse in Ireland in the years leading up to the Rebellion of 1798, with a particular focus on the associations between telegraphy and the United Irish press. Finally, it suggests some points of affinity between Maria Edgeworth’s tale ‘The White Pigeon’ (1800) and her father’s telegraph. In its connection with competing ideas of Irish nationality, security, and surveillance, I argue, the telegraph offers valuable insights into the relations between literature and technology in late eighteenth-century Ireland.

Keywords

Maria Edgeworth (1767–1849)Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744–1817)telegraphUnited Irishmenpublicitysecrecysurveillance‘The White Pigeon’(1800)
Type
Chapter
Information
Technology in Irish Literature and Culture , pp. 49 - 64
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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