The romantic national tale and the question of Ireland Ferris examines the way in which the problem of incomplete uniongenerated by the formation of the United Kingdom in 1800 destabilised British public discourse in the early decades of the nineteenth century and the emergence of the national tale as the main genre to address these issues Cover; Half title; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Acknowledgments; INTRODUCTION The awkward space of Union; CHAPTER 1 Civic travels: the Irish tour and the new United Kingdom; CHAPTER 2 Public address: the national tale and the pragmatics of sympathy; CHAPTER 3 Female agents: rewriting the national heroine in Morgan s later fiction; CHAPTER 4 The shudder of history: Irish Gothic and ruin writing; CHAPTER 5 Agitated bodies: the Emancipation debate and novels of insurgency in the 1820s; Notes; Bibliography; Index