One of Canon Sheehan's earliest novels, written and published just over a century ago, was called The Triumph of Failure. Given the decline of this once-popular Roman Catholic author's reputation in recent years, perhaps any new study of his work should be entitled "The Failure of Triumph". Sheehan was once very widely read, both in this country and overseas - his My New Curate was translated into a dozen languages - and his books were a staple of every Irish Catholic school library, writes Robert O'Byrne.
Many homes in this country also contained complete sets of the Sheehan oeuvre, much of it regularly republished until the 1970s. Now, however, the best place to discover his novels is on the shelves of second-hand bookshops where they are on offer for just a few euro. In both schools and private houses, his place has been taken by contemporary novelists such as Maeve Binchy and Marian Keyes. Sheehan's triumph has failed to last the course.
Circulating libraries
In this respect, he is no different from many other authors during the past 200 years. It was in the first years of the 19th century that novel writing became widespread in these islands as the audience for fiction was swollen by the introduction of circulating libraries. But who now reads the so-called "silver fork" novels of Catherine Gore or Elizabeth Grey, which were incredibly fashionable during the Regency period? Who remembers the "shocking" novels of the mid-19th century such as Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret or Mrs Henry Wood's East Lynne, which sold more than two million copies? Equally forgotten is the work of Sheehan's near contemporary in England, Mrs Humphrey Ward who, like him, was much preoccupied with the place of religious belief in modern society.
Still, the canon's former success will be recalled, however temporarily, this weekend in Doneraile, Co Cork. Tomorrow is the 150th anniversary of Patrick Augustine Sheehan's birth, on St Patrick's Day, 1852; and in the town where he served as parish priest for the last 18 years of his life and wrote all his novels, a commemorative seminar is being held to mark the occasion. It provides an opportunity for those who read Sheehan's novels, probably a long time ago, to remember them and the place they once held in the Irish literary hierarchy.
It would be foolish and unhelpful to make too much of the canon's merits as a writer. His limitations are severe. To begin with, he always wrote from an ardently Catholic point of view and this may not be acceptable to many readers today. In addition, his books are afflicted by an excessive streak of sentimentality. The culture of his era and his own celibate status means that, as a rule, his view of women is unrealistic - though in books such as Luke Delmege and Miriam Lucas he does seem to have something of an obsession with prostitution and its consequences for female well-being. The misfortunes awaiting women who stray from the path of virtue is almost a Sheehan leitmotif.
Intellectual debate
But so too are more abidingly interesting concerns such as the role of Catholicism in Ireland and especially what Sheehan perceived to be the discouragement of intellectual debate within the church of his time. This characteristic was given particular attention in Luke Delmege, published in 1901. One of the canon's early biographers noted that none of his other books drew on him "such a torrent of vitriolic criticism" and that "in many clerical circles it was received with great hostility as an attempt to lampoon the Irish clergy and to set himself up as a teacher and reformer of his fellow-workers in the vineyard".
This perception by his peers of Sheehan as critic and reformer is far removed from the view of the writer which would later become widespread - and helps to draw attention to his literary strengths. Many novelists live to see the work that once attracted large numbers of readers fall out of popular favour. This was not the case with Sheehan; although he did draw a broad audience during his lifetime, his posthumous success in Ireland seems to have been even greater as he came to be associated with the overt Catholicism of the post-Independence period. So while the pervasive presence of religion in his books might be a drawback for today's more secular readers, it provides us with an image of popular culture in this country less than 100 years ago. This is especially important because very few such perspectives are available: most authors from the period whose work is still in circulation - the likes of Yeats and Synge - belonged to a different faith.
Overt Catholicism
Whatever about his weaknesses of style and tone, Sheehan's overt Catholicism and the admiration it once inspired are probably the primary reason why, having once stood so high, he has now fallen so low. But this is precisely why he should be remembered and makes the absence of his name from almost every history of Irish literature in the past century all the more regrettable. There are exceptions to this general oversight - Terence Eagleton and Terence Brown have written perceptively of the canon and a fascinating book by Catherine Candy called Priestly Fictions, published in 1995, examines not just the work of Sheehan but also that of Joseph Guinan and Gerald Donovan, two other authors now fallen into unjust obscurity.
In Doneraile this weekend, events to mark Sheehan's birth are already under way with an exhibition of items he once owned, including his mantle clock and vestments. This afternoon, there will be a talk at Glenanaar on his novel of the same name and tomorrow a whole series of lectures and discussions about the man, his books and his legacy. It may not lead to a revival of his popularity and republication of the novels, but at least Canon Sheehan is not being entirely forgotten.