Vertue Rewarded
{{Short description|1693 novel by an unknown author}}
{{Distinguish|Virtue Rewarded{{!}}Virtue Rewarded}}
{{EngvarB|date=November 2020}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=November 2020}}
{{Infobox book|
| name = Vertue Rewarded
| title_orig =
| translator =
| image = Vertue Rewarded.jpg
| caption = Title page
| author = Unknown
| illustrator =
| cover_artist =
| country = England
| language = Early Modern English
|set_in=Clonmel, 1690
| series =
| genre = Romance novel
Conduct book
| publisher = Richard Bentley
| release_date = 1693
| english_release_date =
| media_type =Print
|dewey=823.4
| pages =
| preceded_by =
| followed_by =
}}
Vertue Rewarded; or, The Irish Princess is a 1693 novel. Published in London, it is one of the earliest examples of Irish prose fiction in the English language.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CKTznQEACAAJ|title=Vertue Rewarded, Or, The Irish Princess|first1=Ian Campbell|last1=Ross|first2=Anne|last2=Markey|date= 2010|publisher=Four Courts Press|isbn=9781846822155|via=Google Books}}{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=muoTAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Vertue+Rewarded%22|title=Irish University Review|date=28 November 2008|publisher=Irish University Press|via=Google Books}}
Two original copies survive; one in the Bodleian Library and one in the British Museum.{{Cite web|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/novel-departure-vertue-rewarded-the-first-irish-novel-written-in-english-1.4419300|title=Novel departure – Vertue Rewarded, the first Irish novel written in English|first=Ray|last=Burke|website=The Irish Times}}
Plot summary
The novel opens with a quote from William D'Avenant's Gondibert (1651).
Set in Clonmel, Ireland in August 1690, the young Irish Protestant woman Marinda is romanced by a European prince in the army of William of Orange.
There are two interpolated tales: one about the Irish princess Cluaneesha (set in pre-Norman Ireland) and one about Faniaca, an indigenous American living through the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire.
Literary significance and criticism
Prof Hubert McDermott has suggested the work as a possible inspiration for Samuel Richardson's Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), considered the first major English novel – the two books have similar plots: "a beautiful and virtuous young woman of little or no social status falls in love with a prince or libertine who is equally besotted but whose wealth, rank and ambition make him desire only to seduce and debauch the chaste heroine, without having to marry her." Also, the title "virtue rewarded" is not found in any other work of the period.{{Cite journal|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/30090731|title=Vertue Rewarded: The First Anglo-Irish Novel|author=McDermott, Hubert|year=1986|journal=Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review|volume=75|issue=298|pages=177–185|jstor=30090731}}
Ian Campbell Ross has noted similarities with Oroonoko, both books mixing romance, history and folklore.{{Cite web|url=https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/archives/vertue-rewarded/|title=Four Courts Press | Vertue rewarded; or, The Irish Princess (1693)|website=www.fourcourtspress.ie}}
John Wilson Foster wrote on how Vertue Rewarded excludes the "wild Irish" from its world (Marinda is an English-speaking Protestant, and presumably of English ancestry), and notes how the Peru story "reinforces the impression of dislocated exotica."{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b2uvkN2taiQC&q=%22Vertue+Rewarded%22&pg=PA23|title=The Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel|first=John Wilson|last=Foster|date=2006|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=9781139827881|via=Google Books}} Vertue Rewarded is assumed to have been written by one of the British planters who settled in Ireland after the Williamite conquest, and has been described as anti-Irish propaganda.{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FQ8nAQAAIAAJ&q=similarity|title=Studies|date=28 November 1986|publisher=Studies|via=Google Books}}
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A65126.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext Full text] on the University of Michigan website
{{Portal|Ireland|Novels}}
{{Authority control}}
Category:17th-century Irish novels
Category:Works published anonymously