US EPA

7495773 

Journal Article 

Migration, nationality and perspective in charles johnston's the history of John Juniper (1781) 

Lines, J 

2017 

32 

11-27 

English 

Recent research has expanded our knowledge of Irish fiction before 1800 and has allowed readings of previously neglected texts as early Irish novels. Charles Johnston (c.1719-c.1800) is one example of a lesser-known novelist whose work has received more sustained engagement as a result. This article builds on recent scholarship on Johnston to interrogate his late novel, The History of John Juniper (1781). This novel has been dismissed as less successful, and of less merit, than other works by Johnston. I argue, however, that the representation of Ireland in John Juniper is both nuanced and distinctive. In this novel Johnston, an Irish novelist based in London, offers depictions of Irish migration to Britain and across the empire, and demonstrates a critical awareness of stereotypical representations of his own nation. John Juniper repudiates the conventional association between the Irish and crime through a plotline in which the concept of an inherited disposition is questioned. An Irish perspective on British and colonial politics in the late eighteenth century can be discerned within John Juniper. © 2017 Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society. All rights rfeserved.