The O’ruddy

Eighteenth-century Ireland and England. After the death of his father, Tom O’Ruddy leaves the diminished family estate at Glandore to deliver important papers to the Earl of Westport, an English nobleman who once served beside him. Proud, impulsive and unfamiliar with the elaborate manners of English society, O’Ruddy quickly becomes involved in an inn-yard quarrel and a duel while defending his father’s honour.

His mission draws him into the household of the Earl and into rivalry, courtship and a succession of comic misadventures among soldiers and aristocrats. The novel treats Georgian society through the perspective of an Irish outsider whose directness repeatedly collides with inherited rank and social convention. Stephen Crane left the manuscript unfinished at his death in 1900; his friend Robert Barr completed it for publication.