Read Ireland Book News
Issue 101
Irish Literature
J.G. Farrell: The Making of a Writer by Lavinia Greacan (Hardback; 30.00 IEP / 42.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
In 1979, in a remote corner of West Cork, J. G. Farrell was drowned while fishing from the rocks near his home. He was forty-four, and it had been only six years since he had won the prestigious Book Prize for his novel The Siege of Krishnapur and his much-loved novel Troubles was hailed as a modern classic. Based on her access to Farrell's family and friends, as well as his notebooks and personal correspondence, Greacan's biography disentangles not only the full circumstances of the novelist's death, but the story of his life and how it informed everything he wrote. She has charted his private world and his travels during the long hard years of his literary apprenticeship. This biography is an important and illuminating work of a major Irish novelist as well as a moving personal story of a complicated man of great humour and brilliance.
A Literary Guide to Dublin by Vivien Igoe (Paperback; 12.99 IEP / 17.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
This book is a fascinating companion to the city that has been the home to some of the most famous names in the history of literature and drama written in English, and the birthplace of three winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature: Beckett, Shaw and Yeats. In the book, the author traces the connection between writers and the city, from natives such as Wilde, Joyce, O'Casey and Behan; to those who spent most of their adult years there such as Kavanagh and Swift; and even visitors such as Dickens and Shelley. Entertaining anecdotes are woven in with details of areas the writers frequented and the locations in which their works were set, accompanied by contemporary and present-day photographs. Also included are five walking tours with maps, guides to the cemeteries where many of the writers are buried, and a separate section on literary pubs.
A Yeats Dictionary: Persons and Places in the Poetry of William Butler Yeats by Lester I.Conner (Paperback; 15.95 IEP / 20.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
This is the first dictionary to identify, chart and explain in context the many proper names and place names that so famously enrich the poetry of William Butler Yeats and, just as famously, anchor that poetry to Ireland. In this compiling work, the author has relied upon Yeats's own prose, the principal Yeats criticism, and the writings of Yeats's friends and critics. The result is a work that warmly ushers the reader into the poems.
My Father's Son by Frank O'Connor (Paperback; 6.99 IEP / 10.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
A reprint of a classic and acclaimed memoir, this book is the second volume of Frank O'Connor's autobiography and begins where An Only Child left off with the author coming out of the internment camp after being imprisoned as an Irish revolutionary and plunging into the burgeoning intellectual-political ferment of Dublin in the 1920s. O'Connor is a young writer struggling to find his place and his voice in a profoundly changed Ireland. The excitement of the Irish literary renaissance is made immediate as O'Connor tells of his friend the poet George Russell of his participation in the triumphs and rivalries of the Abbey Theatre. Here, beautifully rendered, are playwrights Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, Lennox Robinson, and Sean O'Casey. Central to the book - as he was to O'Connors life and work - is the complex and majestic figure of William Butler Yeats. The memoir ends with Yeats's death and with it O'Connor's realisation that he can no longer divide his talent between his job and his passion. He begins, at last, his life as a writer.
The Waves Behind Us: Further Memoirs by Benedict Kiely (Hardback; 14.99 IEP / 19.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
This book is a second volume of memoirs from one of Ireland's most celebrated novelists, short story writers, essayists and broadcasters. It follows on from Drink to the Bird which dealt with Kiely's boyhood and young manhood between the two world wars. Starting in 1941 - and working his way to the present - Kiely recalls his arrival in Dublin and introduces us to the many people who shade his narrative. Kiely's recollections trace the path of his career as a Dublin journalist and, later, a serious prose writer. The memoir includes deft portraits and lyrical homages to such notable Irish writers as W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh and a host of others. Kiely's vivid evocation of people, places and events demonstrates how a great city, bustling with culture and literature, shaped his many-faceted career.
Children of the Dead by Patrick MacGill (Paperback; 9.50 IEP / 14.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
Written as fiction, this book is in fact Patrick MacGill's autobiography. Starting with an account of his childhood in Donegal at the end of the 19th century, the story then moves on to Scotland. Peopled with extraordinary characters and suffused with humour, the book was immensely popular when it was first published. Its unflinching portrayal of the near slavery of the poor in Ireland and Scotland made it as influential in its own way as the work of social investigators in bringing about changes in Irish and British attitudes to poverty and destitution.
Swift: An Illustrated Life by Bruce Arnold (Paperback; 8.95 IEP / 13.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
This provocative book examines this enigmatic figure in the light of his relationships - with his lover Esther Van Homrigh, his war Esther Johnson, his patron Sir William Temple, and his male friends Congreve, Bolingbroke, Harley, Addison, Thomas Sheridan and others. Though often caricatured as a misanthrope, Swift can only be properly understood if we recognise his love of humanity and his capacity for friendship. Arnold traces this theme from Swift's youth in Ireland to his literary and political apprenticeship at Moor Park in Surrey, and on through the years of greatness - the brilliant satires and pamphlets, the Church diplomacy at the Court of Queen Anne, and the great writings of his maturity as Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin: the Draper's Letters, A Modest Proposal, and Gulliver's Travels. Swift's long and varied life is illustrated through contemporary engravings of the places he lived in, the people he knew, and the figures who defined his age.
Kerry on My Mind by Gabriel Fitzmaurice (Paperback; 7.99 IEP / 11.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
This book is a celebration of Kerry: the place, the people, the poetry. Beginning with a meditation on the meaning of Kerry to its natives, and to outsiders, it meanders through the lives of some of its most famous writers (John B. Keane, Bryan MacMahon and Brendan Kennelly), remembers its vibrant singing tradition, looks at its modern practices and ancient customs, and examines the pivotal role of the poet/teacher in this community.
The Ingredients of Poetry by Michael O'Flanagan (Paperback; 6.00 IEP / 9.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
The first prosody published in Ireland in recent years, this book is intended as a guide to new writers and has a substantial section devoted to grammar and syntax. It features an analysis of the work of Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Mary Plunkett, the executed 1916 leaders and of Francis Ledwidge who was killed in the Great War. It also includes examples of work by 45 modern Irish writers.
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