Correspondence, Journals, and Memoirs:

Comment by Michael Banim.
1857.
[Michael recounts a visit to John in Eastbourne, Sussex, from Aug to Nov 1827.] […] during this time I put the last volume of ‘The Croppy’ out of my hands, reading for him every evening the result of the day’s work, and adopting his suggestions as I went on. // I read in MS. at the same time, the rough copy of a tale, which he had put together between whiles and in the lapses between his attacks of pain. This was done without the knowledge of the doctors. […] the tale I allude to was published the year following, under the title of ‘The Anglo-Irish.’ It was of a dif-[193/194]ferent character from the ‘O’Hara Tales,’ and was not announced as proceeding from the same authors. // I cannot say how the ‘Anglo-Irish’ was received—I believe indifferently. The full power of the writer’s mind was not brought to bear on it; unhappily, there was a physical inability to strain the brain to its tension at the time it was written.
Source: Patrick Joseph Murray, The Life of John Banim, the Irish Novelist (London: William Lay, 1857), pp. 193–94.
Notes: Patrick Joseph Murray states that this comment was written ‘to us’ by Michael Banim (p. 193); it is likely that this account of the composition of The Croppy (EN2 1828: 17) and The Anglo-Irish of the Nineteenth Century was provided by Michael Banim during the writing of the Life of John Banim. Date given is the date of publication of the Life.

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