"In The Shamrock and the Cross, Eileen P. Sullivan demonstrates a splendid command of her subject. Her book is required reading for anybody interested in the subject—an unduly neglected one—and, indeed, it deserves to be widely consulted as an essential work by anyone working on immigrant literature in American culture in general." —J. Joseph Lee, Glucksman Professor of Irish Studies, New York University
"Eileen Sullivan’s The Shamrock and the Cross redresses the lack of sufficient attention paid to the role that popular nineteenth-century Irish American fiction played in constructing Irish American identity. The fiction presents alternative ideas about the characterization of Irish American women, a characterization that linked religion with ethnic identity and resulted in Catholicism emerging as the identifying marker of Irish American identity. This excellent book explains the origin of the memorable twentieth-century matriarchs who animate the fiction of Elizabeth Cullinan, Mary Gordon, and Alice McDermott." —Maureen O. Murphy, Hofstra University
"Eileen Sullivan seeks to understand the mind-set of Irish American Catholics in the middle of the nineteenth century by examining popular novels written at the time with them as both the audience and the major characters. It is an imaginative approach for a political scientist to employ literature to grasp attitudes of a distinct portion of the American population at a particular period in American history." —John P. McCarthy, emeritus, Fordham University
"The Shamrock and the Cross is a richly researched, gracefully written study of the main authors and texts of nineteenth-century Irish American literature. Eileen Sullivan makes a very convincing case that these novelists and novels were both shaped by, and gave shape to, the larger contours of American Catholicism in its decades-long struggles with Protestantism and nativism. Hers is a story that took place on both sides of the Atlantic, and a book that contributes significantly to both Irish and Irish American cultural history." —Martin J. Burke, The City University of New York
"Sullivan has produced a fascinating work exploring how fictionalized accounts of Irish American Catholicism shaped the growth and role of the church in American society in the nineteenth century. . . . The work addresses a neglected area of Irish and American Catholic studies and on that ground alone deserves a wide audience." —Theological Studies
"This book studies popular fiction written by and for Irish Catholic immigrants to the United States in the mid-nineteenth Century. . . . Sullivan discovered that these writers fell into the American Catholic—as opposed to American Irish—tradition of encouraging readers to view themselves as Irish Catholics and thus establish an identity both within and apart from American society. Indeed, Sullivan argues that this body of fiction 'suggests some of the reasons why the Church was able to gain its prominent place' in America." —The Catholic Historical Review
“The Shamrock and the Cross . . . presents a deep analysis of lesser-studied Irish American writers of this era and contextualizes their literary output in a way that has not been done previously. . . . The volume] uncovers an overlooked period in Irish American literary history. In doing so, it illuminates subsequent eras of Irish literature in new ways. . . . Scholars of Irish American literature and Catholic American literature alike will want to have this book on their shelves.” —MELUS: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
“This study is a valuable contribution to scholarship on Irish American literature. These foundational novels establish themes which can be traced across subsequent decades.” —The Catholic Historical Review
“In ten thematic chapters that consider the mid-century Irish American novel, Sullivan concentrates on the work of seven writers: Rev. John Boyce, Charles James Cannon, Peter McCorry, John McElgun, Rev. Hugh Quigley, Rev. John T. Roddan, and Mary Anne Sadlier, writers who copper fastened into the unity of church and ethnicity for the Irish in America particularly for the post-Famine immigrant generations.” —Irish Literary Supplement
