Ireland, Modernism, and Imperialism in Standish O’Grady’s The Queen of the World

Abstract

Abstract Standish O’Grady’s narratives of Irish mythology have been regarded as the inaugural works of the Irish literary revival, with considerable dispute among scholars as to the nature of O’Grady’s influence. In 1900, O’Grady published a futuristic fantasy entitled The Queen of the World under the pseudonym Luke Netterville. This work has been largely neglected in studies of the Irish revival and its relations to the modernist movement of the early twentieth century. The following essay examines the modernist aspects of O’Grady’s novel in relation to contrary tendencies towards imperialism and rebellion that it exhibits. In the process, I discuss the fantastic, gothic, and racial aspects of The Queen of the World, particularly as they reflect the complex nature of O’Grady’s political thought and influence from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. This includes discussion of the novel’s affinities with Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race as well as Irish gothic works by Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker. I address the Chinese dimension of the novel in terms of Orientalism and the British Empire, while also considering it in the context of O’Grady’s influence on Patrick Pearse, leader of the 1916 rebellion against British rule in Ireland.