The Blind Astronomer's Daughter
Page 45
Herschel’s unexpected discovery of Uranus (which he originally named Georgium Sidus, “George’s Star,” in honor of King George III) reawakened interest in the Titius-Bode law, since the planet seemed to fit the equation. This inspired a renewed astronomical search of the area between Mars and Jupiter by a team of international astronomers who referred to themselves as the Celestial Police, since they sought to confirm the order of the solar system. This renewed interest eventually led to the discovery of the minor planet Ceres in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi; although Piazzi was not a member of the group, subsequent observations by the Celestial Police confirmed the existence of numerous other objects in the region, constituting the great asteroid belt.
While this was indeed a period of enormous scientific advancement—a great leap forward signaling the birth of the modern era—it was also a time of dramatic political and social unrest. In Ireland, the late 1700s saw the founding of the Society of United Irishmen (also referred to as the United Irishmen, or the United Irish Brotherhood) which originally began as a political organization intent on bringing about reforms in the Irish parliament. But after witnessing the successes of the American Revolution and the French Revolution, the organization set its sights on armed rebellion and an independent Irish republic. Under the leadership of Theobald Wolfe Tone, the United Irishmen sought aid from Napoleon, who sent an expeditionary force in 1797, but the landing was abandoned when the ships encountered bad weather on the northern coast. Growing impatient, The United Irishmen led a failed uprising in the eastern counties in the spring of 1798, with the expectation that sympathizers in the Irish Army would help them take Dublin, and a few months later, a second rebellion began in the west, supported by the arrival of French troops. Both rebellions in 1798 were defeated, with a great loss of life. Irish casualties have been estimated at more than 10,000, though some estimates place the death toll much higher. Although these uprisings marked the beginning of the sporadic movement toward independence that Ireland eventually achieved in the early twentieth century, the immediate aftermath led to the dissolution of the Irish parliament and the union of Ireland and Great Britain in 1800.
The earliest ideas for this novel arose from my travels through Ireland a number of years ago, during which I was researching the influential Irish Romantic poet Mary Tighe (1772–1810), who resided for a time at the family estate in the Woodstock demesne, just outside the town of Inistioge in County Kilkenny. The Tighe mansion at Inistioge, built in 1747, serves as the setting for New Park in the novel. The main character, Caroline Ainsworth, bears only a slight resemblance to Mary Tighe (mostly in my own imagination); Tighe was neither an orphan nor an astronomer, and there was never a giant telescope at the estate, but to this day you can still find the crumbled ruins of the great house—destroyed by fire during the terrible summer of 1922—perched on a green hill above the town.
A Note on the Author
John Pipkin was born in Baltimore and earned his Ph.D. in British literature from Rice University. His first novel, Woodsburner, was named one of the best books of 2009 by the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and the San Francisco Chronicle; it won the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction, the Steven Turner Award for Best Work of First Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Pipkin is the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Harry Ransom Center, and the Dobie Paisano Fellowship Program. He teaches at South-western University, the University of Texas at Austin, and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at Spalding University. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and son.
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First published 2016
This electronic edition published in September 2016
© John Pipkin, 2016
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