Castle Rackrent

Kathryn J. Kirkpatrick notes that Castle Rackrent, written in 1800, has “gathered a dazzling array of firsts—the first regional novel, the first Big House novel, the first saga novel” (vii). While the novel remains largely unread by modern readers, it has garnered praise from literary greats, such as the famous 20th-century Irish poet, W.B. Yeats, and the 19th-century Scottish writer, Walter Scott, who cited it is as inspiration for his 1814 novel, Waverley. In its day, Castle Rackrent even attracted the attention of the British monarch, George III, who at a time when the United Kingdom had colonized Ireland, said “‘I know something now of my Irish subjects’” (ix).

The novel’s title is satirical, as it combines the “castle” of feudal ownership with the name “Rackrent,” which refers to the practice of the profligate Anglo-Irish landlord who “‘took the land at a reasonable rent and sub-let at the highest price he could get, a procedure which caused untold misery’” (xiv). Other practices of English landlords, which are satirized in the novel, are absenteeism, defined as a practice of collecting Irish rents while being abroad and relying on brutal middlemen to extract rent from tenants; and general neglect of their estate, so that conditions of squalor prevailed.