Sir, – Lucille Redmond's "An Irishwoman's Diary" (December 9th) mentions CR Fletcher as joint author with Rudyard Kipling, of a history textbook which gave an unflattering portrait of the Irish population. The same CR Fletcher wrote an earlier (1907) Introduction to the History of England which was severely criticised by Mary Hayden for its biased treatment of Irish history.
Hayden was to become, in 1911, the first professor of modern Irish history in University College Dublin. Fletcher was a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. In a series of three articles published in the English magazine the Sphere, in August-September 1908, Hayden described Fletcher's writing on Ireland as reckless, improbable and factually inaccurate, quoting Alice Stopford Green, and others such as Kuno Meyer, in refutation, and citing earlier sources including Spenser, Fynes Moryson and the Annals of the Four Masters. Hayden concluded her series, called "Irish history as she is written", by questioning whether Fletcher's representation of the Irish population as ignorant savages was either judicious or conducive to good feeling between the peoples of the two countries, in a work written for the future men and women of England. – Yours, etc,
JOYCE PADBURY,
Dublin.