'Whom Gentler Stars Unite': Fiction and Union in the Irish Novel‪.‬

This essay argues that, despite recent work, the self-conscious aspects of later-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century fiction have been under-explored. It considers manifestations of literary self-consciousness such as intertextuality, self-reflective commentary, the underscoring of fictional tropes, and explicit concern with general issues of representation, in the work of four Irish women writers: Elizabeth Sheridan (1759-1837); Sydney Owenson (1775-1859); Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) and Regina Maria Roche (1764-1845). The essay illustrates the self-conscious features of these texts in relation to their deployment of romance plots, which it understands as complicating the use in fiction of marriage as an allegory of political union. **********