The Knight of Cheerful Countenance

by M.J. Farrell, Molly Keane

To Ballinrath House, where purple bog gives way to slate-coloured mountains, comes Allan to visit his Irish cousins. No sooner has he arrived than he falls in love with Cousin Ann, though it seems that she only has eyes for Captain Dennys St Lawrence.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Ireland

272 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1921

About the author

M.J. Farrell is a pseudonym used by Molly Keane for her earlier published novels and plays.

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading about fox hunting is a lot like reading about cricket. It’s a whole ridiculous vocabulary of its own, describing maneuvers totally obscure to an outsider. You’ll finish a sentence thinking you understood the meaning of each word but still be in the dark as to the meaning of the sentence. I also found that there is still fox hunting happening in Maryland, and that it is still incredibly dangerous: many masters of the hunt have died in past years.

With or without the fox hunting passages, though, this was a charming and fun-to-read book—all up until the end, which was a silly schoolgirl fantasy. It was obvious where it was going from the start, but I had hoped that it would be accomplished with more sophistication. Still, a nicely done (self-)portrait of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy as it was beginning to crumble.

[Lila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written by the author at age 17 and published by a publisher known for romance novels, this is not juvenilia, but a developed and particularly Irish horsey picture of the nearly unimaginable world of the 1920s Irish ascendancy country house, full of fox hunting, horse dealing and dog obsessed people who essentially ignore the Irish poor and political upheaval. The women are physical, get dirty, and focus on their horses above all else, while on the edges of the plot are upset farmers who barely put up with fox hunting across their fields and women with murdered brothers.