In her entry in the Encyclopedia Of Ireland, Dorothea Herbert is described as suffering the worst fate of any writer, that of all of her works being lost. What did survive are these retrospections, but on reading them, one is left in no doubt that she considered the fate she suffered while alive as being far worse, and it's difficult to disagree, and it's a hard heart that wouldn't break for poor Dorothea, unlucky in love, shattered by grief, subjected to mystifying abuse by a once-loving family, which may or may not be the product an mental and emotional breakdown.

This collection, originally published in two parts in 1929, one hundred years after her death,
and 1930, are a memoir of her life growing up in rural Ireland from her childhood to her seclusion, from 1770 to 1806. They provide a fascinating and often delightful and frequently distressing insight into a way of life and a society mostly understood today through the pageantry of historical fiction and drama. The daughter of a country rector who enjoyed reasonable financial security compared to most, she was educated and clever and witty - comparisons with Jane Austen are unavoidable, albeit Dorothea's life was far more rustic and was enlivened by tithe wars and rebellions and French invasions going off in the background. Nonetheless she seems happy enough. Though lowly enough in their social setting they enjoyed many high connections, resulting in lots of visitations and gatherings. As children Dorothea and her siblings seem utterly wild and carry a propensity for bizarre tricks and pranks well into young adulthood, until the boys are sent to school and her close friends and companions begin to marry.

Dorothea's own love affair seems odd and repressed to modern eyes, and her beau, the bould John Roe, remains opaque, even as she brings him to life on the page, describing him and his behaviour and his manner meticulously. Poor Dorothea plumbs the depths of her own emotions, and can be gently caustic about other women and whole families, but the hearts of most men seem not just off limits but alien to her. She does, at the last, attain the crushing insight that she loves him even though he was always unworthy of that love, and that the weight of that is going to fall entirely on her. The social and legal freedoms afforded, constrained only by strength or decency of character, provide fragile protections to vulnerable women. Dorothea does not get a happy ending, and these were written not for posterity but to distract her and channel her pain. We're lucky to have them, in that sense, though whether it was worth it for Dotty is moot these centuries later.

Highly readable, witty, charming, and ultimately heartbreaking, this is a wonderful and invaluable book, and the foreword by Louis Cullen provides historical and social context.