The history of Jack Connor

by William Chaigneau

Ian Campbell Ross, editor

‘Published anonymously in 1752, this picaresque novel of the time of Richardson’s Clarissa and Fielding’s Tom Jones, to whom the author makes witty reference, has great value for the modern reader. Here are Ireland and the Irish as seen from home by one of their own and by the contemptuous English in England … Much can be learned and enjoyed of the character and opinions [of the Huguenots of Chaigneau’s generation]: here are mid 18th-century English Huguenots (but few Irish) as one of their own saw them, not the re-constructions by later historians we have become so used to', Randolph Vigne, The Huguenot Society Journal (2014).