John Wilson Croker

John Wilson Croker, a Munster barrister, was the type of Irishman who decided early in his professional and political career that in order to be successful he would need to become more English than the English. His rabidly Tory political affiliations first crossed Sydney Owenson's path in 1804. Croker had anonymously published a series of bitter satires on notable Irish actors, which Sydney publically defended, thus earning her a potent political and literary enemy in Croker.

Following Sydney's rise to fame after the publication of The Wild Irish Girl, the English government at Dublin Castle enlisted Croker to destroy her credibility and reputation, and hopefully her blooming literary career and the associated surge in Irish nationalism. In his attack, published in the Freeman's Journal, he wrote:

I accuse her of attempting to vitiate mankind of attempting to undermine the morality of sophistry, and that under the insidious mask of virtue, sensibility and truth.

The attempt backfired as hundreds of letters in her defense flooded the Journal. Despite his failure, Croker was rewarded for his efforts by an "election" to Parliament from Downpatrick in 1807. He made his mark soon afterwards by exposing one of his colleagues for misappropriation of funds. He was later made Secretary of the Admirality.

His literary exploits continued in London where beginning in 1809, he was a founding contributor for the Quarterly Review, of which he eventually became the editor. He wrote 270 articles for the Quarterly Review attacking, among others, Macauley, Thackeray, Disraeli, Dumas, Rousseau, Hugo, Balzac, Sands, Keats, Barbauld and, of course, Sydney Owenson. Macauley said that Croker was "a man who would go a hundred miles through snow and sleet on top of a coach to search a parish register and prove a man illegitimate or a woman older than she says she is" and W. J. Fitzpatrick described him at this period as "the barbed pen which sixteen years later stabbed Keats to death, and sought to fasten itself in Sydney Owenson's heart."

Owenson, now Lady Morgan, was well aware that her most bitter enemy was lying in wait for her, and in her preface to 1817's France she threw down a challenge to him. His response was perhaps the most infamous review ever printed in the Quarterly Review: a 25 page dissection of her book charging her with everything from bad grammar to crimes against God, England and the sanctity of women. The review was basically a catalogue of insult and misrepresentation. For example, in a story Lady Morgan relates about the town of Boulogne-sur-mer needing to transport a statue of the Virgin Mary from a neighboring town for a religious procession, Croker intentionally leads the reader to believe that she is speaking of an actual virgin! There are errors in France, but what seems to enrage Croker is her confident style, unabashed declaration of her opinions, and presumption of knowing more about the country than Croker himself. As with the review of The Wild Irish Girl Croker's tactics backfired. Sales of France went up after the review was published - 4 editions in England, 2 in France and 4 in America sold out immediately.

But Lady Morgan had her own method for getting even with Croker. In her next novel Florence Macarthy, she created a thinly veiled caricature of Croker as Counsellor Conway Townsend Crawley:

If ever there was a man formed alike by nature and education to betray the land that gave him birth and to act openly as the pander of political corruption or secretly as the agent of defamation, who would stoop to seek his fortune by effecting the fall of a frail woman, or would strive to advance it by stabbing the character of an honest one - who would crush aspiring merit behind the ambuscade of anonymous security while he came forward openly in the defence of that, vileness which rank sanctified and influence protected - that man was Conway Crawley. He was yet young, but belonging to the day and the country where he first raised his hiss, and shed his venom, success already beckoned him towards her, with a smile of encouragement, and a leer of contempt.

When Lady Morgan published Italy in 1821, she again wrote a challenge to Croker, this time in the form of A letter to the Reviewers of Italy, which was published as a pamphlet and inserted into copies of the book. His anticipated review was a regurgitation of the same old criticisms of taste, style and liberal opinions, but was not of the same scope as the France review. Italy was almost as popular with readers as the runaway hit France, and its many fans included Byron who, in a letter to the Irish poet Thomas Moore, wrote "Her work is fearless and excellent on the subject of Italy; pray tell her so. I know the country. I wish she had fallen in with me; I could have told her a thing or two that would have confirmed her position."

Criticisms by John Wilson Croker

Lady Moran's France, Quarterly Review, 1817

Lady Moran's Italy, Quarterly Review, 1821

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