58.0 cm x 78.5 cm folded to 19.5 cm x 16.0 cm

The Shannon Valley covers the area in the triangle of land between Athlone, Ballinasloe and Portumna and centres on the River Shannon, River Suck and Little Brosna River. The two-sided, folded guide and map combines artwork and text to introduce the main heritage features such as Clonmacnoise and Clonfert but also invites the visitor to explore lesser known sites of historical and environmental interest. The map side is in full colour and depicts bogs, eskers, river floodplains and species of flowers and birds. It also marks places of heritage interest and includes angling locations, marinas and long- distance walking trails that traverse the area. The reverse side of the map contains fifteen pages of text, illustrated by seventeen pencil drawings, to provide information on natural history and heritage, including castles, Napoleonic fortifications and a wealth of ecclesiastical sites. Grid references are used for easy cross-reference between the text, illustrations and the map.

A1 map.
Artwork by Anne Korff, text by Stephen Heery

64pp. 25.0 x 22.0 cm illus. in colour and monochrome

This book tells the fascinating history of the plans to build an innovative theatre in Samuel Beckett’s name in Oxford, the site by St Peter’s College, the designs and the problems. It is a narrative which takes in artists such as Francis Bacon and Henry Moore, famed architects Norman Foster and Richard Buckminster Fuller, politicians and royalty including Edward Heath, Richard Kennedy and Prince Charles, as well as a range of playwrights, composers, actors and directors (including Benjamin Britten, Richard Burton, Peter Hall, John Osborne, Harold Pinter, John Piper, Kathleen Raine, Sir Herbert Read, to name a few).

Beckett’s influence upon British theatre and culture is often dispersed, refracted. A Dream and its Legacies reveals a number of surprising, interwoven histories, and shows how such histories also have the power to inform, even drastically change, how we read certain of Beckett’s texts. The book includes a collection of previously unpublished letters by Samuel Beckett.

Contents
Introduction
Stage 1: The Matthews Building
Stage 2: The Nuclear Submarine
Sans/Lessness
Breath
Warner's Drama
What do a Henry Moore Sculpture Garden, Lawrence of Arabia's School and a Car-Park all have in Common?
Epilogue: The Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award and Other Repercussions
Appendix: Beckett-Warner Correspondence
Notes

38pp. 20.4 cm.

The poems in the present collection are somewhat autumnal in mood, reflecting both personal and spontaneous reactions to the world around. Sometimes strange sightings provoke personal reflections on the difference between nature and the modern world, whilst also revealing unsuspected significance.

54pp. 20.4 cm

The poems in this collection swing in mood from darkly serious to rather lighter tones, the emphasis being on reactions both to what is observed physically, and to associations aroused by single words or ideas. These can be extreme, as with 'Inside Belsen' or 'Brimstone'. Sometimes, as with 'John Lindley Has Died', a news story in a magazine can provoke an emotional response, as the mind attempts to come to terms with what the announcement has evoked.

Selected Prose & Related Documents

336 pp. 23.4 x 13.5 cm illus. in colour and monochrome

Poet of the Second World War and peacetime dramatist, Francis Warner was 75 this year (2012). This, the first selection from his prose, gives readers of his work some indication of the historical and intellectual background from which his poetry has sprung: of 'the giant race before the flood' who lived on to help shape Britain's post-war imagination.

Starting with memories of the Blitz and his poem 'Blitz Requiem', Warner recalls his schooldays at Christ's Hospital, Horsham, recovering from six years of war, and the role played by music.

He writes of his friends: 'Henry Chadwick: Musician', Kathleen Raine as fellow poet, C. S. Lewis and the Psalms, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Edmond Blunden, and Samuel Beckett, reproducing the manuscripts off two short plays Beckett discussed with and gave to him. Other subjects include W. B. Yeats, Benjamin Britten and the Japanese Noh plays, Samuel Palmer as poet, and Hugh Wybrew's Liturgical Texts of the Orthodox Church.

The book concludes with 'Francis Warner as Musician in Performance' an illustrative CD with music by Honegger, Vaughan Williams, and Warner's collaborator the composer and organist David Goode: and Stephen Cleobury conducting the Choir of King's College Cambridge singing one of their anthems.

Francis Warner DLitt, Hon. DMus, is Emeritus Fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford, and Honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge.

Contents

Armageddon and Faith: a Survivor's Meditation on the Blitz, 1940-45
Blitz Requiem
Remembrance Sunday Sermon, King's College Chapel, Cambridge, 2011
Four War Sonnets
Christ's Hospital Three and Sixty Years Ago
Henry Chadwick: Musician
The Song that is Christmas
A Cambridge Friendship: Kathleen Raine and Francis Warner
C. S. Lewis and the Revision of the Psalter
A Blessing on C. S. Lewis's home in Oxford, The Kilns
Foreword to Hugh Wybrew: Liturgical Texts of the Orthodox Church
The Bones and the Flesh: Henry Moore and Francis Bacon
Samuel Palmer's Poem 'The Sorceress'
James Joyce's Poetry
J. M. Synge's Poetry
Edmund Blunden's Pastoral Poetry
Richard Wall's rondeau cycle In Aliquot Parts
Japanese Noh plays and W. B. Yeats, Benjamin Britten and Samuel Beckett
Manuscript of Beckett's Breath
The Absence of Nationalism in the Work of Samuel Beckett
Manuscript of Beckett's Sans, and covering Letter
A Cup of Coffee in Paris, by Penelope Warner
Francis Warner as a Musician in the1950s, by Bernard Martin
Compact disc: Francis Warner as Musician in Performance
Anthem for Christ the King
Notes
Index

56pp. illus. 27.0 x 19.0 cm.

The first performance of David Goode's Eight Sonnets by Francis Warner was given in the hall of King's College, Cambridge, 14 June 2015, on the occasion of the retirement of the College Chaplain, Richard Lloyd Morgan, and sung by him with David Goode at the piano.

The Sonnets

'Sometimes a summer's day begins in mist'
'I did not see the bombs fall on the Thames'
'Was it mere chance that brought the mating hare'
'Should we preserve intensity alone'
'Night wins. The realizing dark'
'Just now is dawn, and I am out of doors'
'Twenty-eight fighter bombers overhead'
'The held cascade of vaulting stone unites'

With a free CD recording, which can be bought separately at http://www.oxrecs.comeightsonnets.html

278pp. 27.0 x 19.0 cm.

This book is the outcome of over a decade's collaboration between three friends: David Goode as composer, Francis Warner as librettist, and Stephen Cleobury as choirmaster.

Contents

David Goode, words by Francis Warner

Anthem for All Saints' Day
Anthem for St Catharine's Day
Anthem for St Cecilia's Day
Anthem for St Peter's Day
Anthem for the Visitation
Anthem for Christ the King

David Goode
Variations on a Theme by Francis Warner

With a CD of these works sung by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, conducted by Stephen Cleobury during Choral services

www.goodeorganist.org

http://www.oxrecs.com/sixanthems.html

Conductor's score: xiv, 105 pp. cloth 35.0 x 23.7 cm. ISBN: 978-0-86140-490-2  £100.00 ltd to 40 signed copies
Vocal score: xiv, 82 pp. pbk 26.8 x 19.0 cm.             ISBN: 978-0-86140-491-9   £10.00
Full score: xiv, 105 pp. pbk 30.8 x 20.8cm                 ISBN: 978-0-86140-492-6   £15.00

The first performance of David Goode's one-hour Blitz Requiem, with words by Francis Warner, took place at St Paul's Cathedral, London, on 23 September 2013. The soloists were Emma Tring, Suzanna Spicer, Matthew Long and Robert Davies, with the Bach Choir and the Royal Philharmoic Orchestra (Leader Clio Gould) conducted by David Hill, and was broadcast on Classic FM. It was generously sponsored by the Murphy Foundation, with additional support from Victoria Sharp and Simon Yates.

Reviews

'From the darkest days of the Blitz comes new music of sublime beauty by world-renowned organist David Goode.' Mail on Sunday

'. . . Francis Warner who at the centre of it endured through the Nazi five-year onslaught on London, has given the country's ordeal its lasting spiritual articulation. His poetry speaks for his nation: indeed for all of us.' Temenos

'Its music and words are certainly memorable. Goode's Blitz Requiem owns the dramatic qualities, melodic eloquence and inventive richness required for repeat performances, and perhaps to establish a lasting place in the contemporary choral repertoire mainstream.' Classical Music Magazine

'This work is exemplary: it has a warmly conceived, well-mapped score, and a profoundly evocative text by Francis Warner. His imagery hits the nail on the head, and melts the heart. It takes quite some music to match and convey this. The range, rich variety and huge intelligence of Goode's music is wholly up to the task. This is a major work from an exciting composer.' Church Times

With a recording of the performance on CD

www.goodeorganist.org

x, 252pp. 21.6cm

For decades, commentators on nineteenth-century Irish literature or history have routinely mentioned the significance of the Dublin University Magazine. Published monthly from January 1833 to December 1877, the DUM attracted as its contributors – and in several cases its editors – nearly every major Irish writer from this period. Prior to the publication of this work, however, there has been no systematic, book-length discussion of the magazine’s entire career.

In this study, Wayne Hall traces the dual nature of the magazine, its attention to both England and Ireland, which helps us to understand the sometimes guilty and reluctant, sometimes celebratory and passionate, union of these different cultural traditions and values. The DUM expressed a complex brand of Irish national identity that defines itself partly in cultural and partly in political terms.

In seeking its own balance between excluding and including, between culture and politics, the DUM developed one main pattern in its pages: the magazine’s political commentary stakes out the ideological ground with varying degrees of rigidity and exclusivity, while its literary contributions expand the magazine’s total scope to embrace a much wider and more generous vision of ‘Irishness’.

Within the terms and tensions of the journalistic dialogue, then, readers can see the political and the literary values jostling against each other. The magazine serves as a detailed and thorough record of conservative political thought in the nineteenth century, and also shows that Irish political events have drawn much of their shape from the literature, even as that literature was being shaped in turn by politics.

Wayne E. Hall is an associate dean at the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Cincinnati, as well as a faculty member of the Department of English and Comparative Literature. His previous book was Shadowy Heroes: Irish Literature in the 1890s.

More info →

Chosen and introduced by George Cusack

The sixteenth volume of the Irish Drama Selections series (ISSN 0260-7962), General Editors: Joseph Ronsley and Ann Saddlemyer.

21.6 x 13.8cm.

Contains: The Things That Are Caesar’s, Shadow and Substance, The Conspirators, The White Steed, The Devil Came from Dublin, and Goodbye to the Summer, articles about his and others' plays – 'The Substance of Paul Vincent Carroll', 'On Legend and the Arts', 'The White Steed', 'Scottish Drama', 'Can the Abbey be Restored?', 'Reforming a Reformer, 'The Rebel Mind' – and a bibliographical checklist.

Paul Vincent Carroll was the first Irish Catholic to write for the Irish National Theatre after Irish independence. As such, his work offers a unique perspective on Irish life in the early years of the Irish Free State and Irish Republic, particularly the influence of the Catholic Church in rural Ireland. He is particularly known for his depictions of the Catholic clergy, which are simultaneously critical, hopeful, and, above all, human.

Although Carroll was lauded in both Dublin and New York as a major new theatrical voice, virtually none of his work has been in print since his death in 1968.

George Cusack is the author of The Politics of Identity in Irish Drama: W. B. Yeats, Augusta Gregory, and J. M. Synge, and the co-editor of Hungry Words: Images of Famine in the Irish Canon. He received his PhD from the University of Oregon in 2003. He is currently the Director of the Edith Kinney Gaylord Expository Writing Program at the University of Oklahoma.

The First Edition of 1876, with an Introduction and Commentary by Brian Arkins

From the mid-eighteenth century onwards, people from Britain and Ireland began to visit Greece, mainly with a view to investigating the material remains of the ancient Greek past. Long before he gained eminence as Provost of Trinity College Dublin, and as a Classicist, John Pentland Mahaffy had been hired to accompany a Cambridge undergraduate, William Goulding, around Greece and his account of those travels was published as Rambles and Studies in Greece in 1876.

In it Mahaffy describes a world wildly different from that which greets the modern visitor – at least in the methods of transport and ease (or lack of it) of getting from one place to another and the questions of where to stay. It was almost as alien to visitors from the British Isles then as it would be for visitors of this century visiting the Ireland of the nineteenth.

Ancient Greece was the same as now: the beauty of the landscape endures, but then rivalries between local museums ensured that there were inadequate records of the country’s antiquities, and no central record of what had actually been discovered, so travellers were often embarking on a journey of discovery, finding unrecorded inscriptions, and more importantly entire buildings, while occasional meetings with local brigands in certain parts of the country added a sense of danger and adventure.

Mahaffy’s work was therefore an eye-opener for the armchair traveller, and in Britain it went through five editions by 1907, each enlarged and revised, as well as being published in the USA in 1892, and in 1913 Macmillan New York published what they described as the seventh edition. The first American edition, published by Henry Coates in 1900, contained a number of contemporary photographs that had not appeared in earlier editions, and a number of these are reproduced here, with engravings that appeared in the first edition.

As the editor of the present edition, Professor Brian Arkins, notes: ‘This new edition of Mahaffy’s Rambles and Studies in Greece reprints the text of the first edition of 1876, in which the author states that ‘It is to me a cherished object to make English-speaking people intimate with the life of the old Greeks’. Mahaffy achieves that object with great éclat, so that his book functioned at the time – and still functions – as an excellent introduction to the history, archaeology, landscape, literature, visual art and music of ancient Greece. So although Mahaffy’s book went into seven editions … the first edition of 1876 has a freshness and vividness that the material added in later editions serves only to obscure; for that reason, the first edition is here reprinted, and provided with a full Commentary.’ It is as interesting now to the modern reader as it was to those reading it over 130 years ago.

Brian Arkins is Professor Emeritus of Classics at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and one of the Directors of the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies in Athens. He was educated at Clongowes Wood College and at University College Dublin, where he obtained an MA in Classics and a PhD in Latin. He is the author of eleven books of criticism, including three on Latin poetry and four on Greek and Roman themes in modern Irish Literature. His most recent book is What Shakespeare Stole from Rome (2012).

CONTENTS<br

List of Illustrations<br

Mahaffy: Classicist and Philhellene. By Brian Arkins<br

Preface<br

I. Introduction – First Impressions of the Coast<br

II. General Impressions of Athens and Attica<br

III. Athens – The Museums – The Tombs<br

IV. The Acropolis of Athens<br

V. Excursions in Attica – Phalerum – Laurium<br

VI. Excursions in Attica – Sunium – Marathon – Eleusis<br

VII. From Athens to Thebes – The Passes of Mount Cithaeron, Eleutherae, Plataea<br

VIII. The Plain of Orchomenos, Lebadea, Chaeronea<br

IX. Arachova – Delphi – The Bay of Cirrha<br

X. Corinth, Mycenae, Tiryns<br

XI. Argos, Nauplia, and Coast of Argolis<br

XII. Greek Music and Painting<br

Commentary. By Brian Arkins<br

Index

More info →

Edited by Alan Price

paperback 21.4 cm.

J.M.Synge died in 1909 and The Works of John M. Synge were published in four volumes by Maunsel & Co., Dublin, in 1910. Since that time, with the exception of a few minor verses and one or two fragments of prose, the canon of his work has remained unaltered. Nevertheless, much unpublished material exists, for the most part of great interest and significance for the understanding of Synge's methods of work and development. This material, including early drafts of the plays, notebooks, poems, and fragments of poetic drama, has now been thoroughly explored in order to create this definitive edition, first published by Oxford University Press 1962-68, which not only collects together all that is of significance in his printed and in his unprinted work, but also, by a careful use of worksheets and early drafts, indicates much of the process of creation which occurred before the production of the printed page. The Collected Works is in four volumes, under the general editorship of the late Professor Robin Skelton, of the University of Victoria, British Columbia, who began the series with his edition of the poems and translations.

The second volume, edited by the late Dr Alan Price, of The Queen's University, Belfast, author of Synge and Anglo-Irish Drama, assembles all Synge's prose writings of any merit or interest. Over half of it consists of a reprint of The Aran Islands, and In Wicklow, West Kerry and Connemara, checked and supplemented where necessary by collation with Synge's own manuscripts and proofs. About a quarter consists of articles and reviews not previously collected, and the rest, including most of Part One, was never published before. Thus the prose of Synge can here be seen as a whole and should lead to a deeper understanding of both the writer and the Anglo-Irish literary revival. Thirty-five drawings by Jack B. Yeats are included.

These volumes were published in 1982 by arrangement with Oxford University Press.

Edited by Robin Skelton

ISBN: 978-0-86140-058-4

xxxvi, 128 pp. 21.4 cm.

J.M.Synge died in 1909 and The Works of John M. Synge were published in four volumes by Maunsel & Co., Dublin, in 1910. Since that time, with the exception of a few minor verses and one or two fragments of prose, the canon of his work has remained unaltered. Nevertheless, much unpublished material exists, for the most part of great interest and significance for the understanding of Synge's methods of work and development. This material, including early drafts of the plays, notebooks, poems, and fragments of poetic drama, has now been thoroughly explored in order to create this definitive edition, first published by Oxford University Press 1962-68, which not only collects together all that is of significance in his printed and in his unprinted work, but also, by a careful use of worksheets and early drafts, indicates much of the process of creation which occurred before the production of the printed page.

The Collected Works is in four volumes, under the general editorship of the late Professor Robin Skelton, of the University of Victoria, British Columbia, who begins the series with his edition of the poems and translations, in which he has more than doubled the canon of Synge's verse. The prefaces by W. B. Yeats and Synge to the first, Cuala Press, edition are also included. The late Dr Alan Price, of The Queen's University, Belfast, edited the prose and Professor Ann Saddlemyer of Victoria College, University of Toronto, has edited the plays, published in two volumes. These volumes were published by arrangement with Oxford University Press.

Edited by Ann Saddlemyer

ISBN: 978-0-86140-061-4

xxxvi, 304 pp. 21.4cm

J.M.Synge died in 1909 and The Works of John M. Synge were published in four volumes by Maunsel & Co., Dublin, in 1910. Since that time, with the exception of a few minor verses and one or two fragments of prose, the canon of his work has remained unaltered. Nevertheless, much unpublished material exists, for the most part of great interest and significance for the understanding of Synge's methods of work and development. This material, including early drafts of the plays, notebooks, poems, and fragments of poetic drama, has now been thoroughly explored in order to create this definitive edition, first published by Oxford University Press 1962-68, which not only collects together all that is of significance in his printed and in his unprinted work, but also, by a careful use of worksheets and early drafts, indicates much of the process of creation.

The Collected Works is under the general editorship of the late Professor Robin Skelton, of the University of Victoria, British Columbia. The first volume contains his edition of Synge's poems and translations; the second assembles all Synge's prose writings of any merit or interest, edited by the late Dr Alan Price, of The Queen's University, Belfast.

The third and fourth volumes are devoted to Synge's plays, edited by Professor Ann Saddlemyer, then of Victoria College, University of Toronto, now retired. The first of these volumes contains texts of Riders to the Sea, The Shadow of the Glen, and The Well of the Saints, and of the originally little known When the Moon has Set, with appendices analysing the drafts of each play and giving details of first productions. In addition the volume contains much unpublished material, scenarios, dialogues, and fragments, discovered among Synge's notebooks.

This volume provides definitive texts of The Tinker's Wedding, The Playboy of the Western World, and Deirdre of the Sorrows. For all these three plays recently discovered manuscript and notebook material has involved a certain amount of textual alteration; an examination of the long-lost final typescript of The Playboy of the Western World has provided many clues to the author's intentions, while comparison of the various drafts of Deirdre of the Sorrows with the typescript given by the executors to Yeats and Lady Gregory has enabled Dr Saddlemyer to determine the extent of posthumous collaboration.

Synge rewrote his plays many times; one act of The Playboy ran to at least fifteen full drafts, not counting numerous alterations. By examining each available draft of every play, the editor has been able to provide not only a final text of each play as close as possible to the dramatist's version, but in her accompanying notes almost a variorum study of significant passages. Appendixes record the growth of each play from the original scenario through many drafts to the final text, and include discarded scenes which throw new light on the playwright's creative process. Details of first productions and a comprehensive description of all the manuscript sources are also included. The introduction traces the history of each play, quoting extensively from Synge's unpublished correspondence and notebooks to record the dramatist's attitude to his own work in the making, and to set each play against the broader background of the Abbey Theatre. In searching out the material for this edition, Dr Saddlemyer has made use of public and private collections in both Ireland and the United States, and has also included a glossary and guide to pronunciation.

These volumes were published by arrangement with Oxford University Press.

Edited by Ann Saddlemyer

ISBN: 978-0-86140-060-7

J.M.Synge died in 1909 and The Works of John M. Synge were published in four volumes by Maunsel & Co., Dublin, in 1910. Since that time, with the exception of a few minor verses and one or two fragments of prose, the canon of his work has remained unaltered. Nevertheless, much unpublished material exists, for the most part of great interest and significance for the understanding of Synge's methods of work and development. This material, including early drafts of the plays, notebooks, poems, and fragments of poetic drama, has now been thoroughly explored in order to create this definitive edition, first published by Oxford University Press 1962-68, which not only collects together all that is of significance in his printed and in his unprinted work, but also, by a careful use of worksheets and early drafts, indicates much of the process of creation which occurred before the production of the printed page.

The Collected Works is in four volumes, under the general editorship of the late Professor Robin Skelton, of the University of Victoria, British Columbia. The first volume contains edition of Synge's poems and translations, the second assembles all Synge's prose writings of ant merit or interest, edited by the late Dr Alan Price, of The Queen's University, Belfast.

The third and fourth volumes are devoted to Synge's plays, edited by Professor Ann Saddlemyer, then of Victoria College, University of Toronto, now retired. Only five of the plays were published during Synge's lifetime. One emptied the Abbey Theatre, yet was the first of its productions to be translated and performed on the Continent; one caused riots in both Britain and America; one was considered 'too dangerous' to be performed in Ireland. All were written during the last seven years of Synge's life, for the Abbey Theatre, of which he was co-director with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory. But although his output was comparatively slight, Synge's contribution to the development of modern drama is immeasurable.

In the first volume of the plays we see the development of the playwright's craft. Definitive texts, based on Synge's own notebooks and typewritten drafts, are provided of Riders to the Sea, The Shadow of the Glen, and The Well of the Saints. Included is his controversial first play, When the Moon Has Set, rejected three times by his co-directors, yet carefully preserved by Synge among his papers. Other material discovered among his notebooks, scenarios, dialogues, and fragments, written between 1894 and 1908, indicates not only the scrupulousness with which Synge studied his art, but his rich and fertile imagination. A comprehensive introduction records the history of each play in the making, from genesis to finished product, at the same time setting Synge's work within the larger context of his experience as director and producer and quoting from his own letters documenting his progress. Appendices analysing the drafts of each play and giving details of first productions provide further bibliographical information and describe the numerous manuscript sources tracked down by the editor in public and private collections in both Ireland and the United States.

The second volume of plays contains texts of The Tinker's Wedding, The Playboy of the Western World, and Deirdre of the Sorrows, with similar notes and appendices.

These volumes were published by arrangement with Oxford University Press.

George C, Sandulescu

Vol.1             ISBN: 0-901072-41-9   £40.00
Vol.2             ISBN: 0-901072-42-7   £40.00
Both v.1 &v.2 ISBN: 0-901072-96-6 £80.00

Edited by Henry Summerfield

During its existence, A.E. contributed, often anonymously chiefly while he was its editor, to well over 1,000 issues of the Homestead and 400 of the Statesman. Professor Summerfield has made a selection covering the entire period, dividing it into general articles and book reviews, and adding indexes to themes, books reviewed and of footnotes. In two volumes, sold separately or as a pair, totalling 1,037 pages.

This collection of fourteen substantial essays has been designed to map the landscape of Irish fiction since 1960, and to assess the extraordinary literary achievement of Irish novelists and short story writers, North and South of the border, over the last forty years.

As this volume demonstrates, Irish novelists and short story writers since 1960 have both continued and challenged conventional notions of Irish fiction; and they have contributed, in stimulating and inventive style, to the continuous examination of Irish identity, culture and politics, while making their fiction resonate with wide cultural, intellectual and human interest.

The book includes essays which focus on major individual writers - Samuel Beckett, Brian Moore, Jennifer Johnston, Maurice Leitch, John McGahern, Patrick McGinley and John Banville. There are also general essays of a more explicitly comparative and thematic nature covering such topics as the impact of modernisation on Irish fiction, the contemporary ‘Big House’ novel, the Protstant imagination, the ‘Troubles’ Novel, the importance of the past, childhood and women’s narratives, constructions of masculinity, and women short story writers. By closely analysing key texts, exploring the relationships between texts, and also between texts and their social, cultural and political contexts, and by examining significant themes and preoccupations, these essays offer valuable insights into the variety and complexity of modern Irish fiction from a range of viewpoints.

Contents

Introduction: The New Humanism. Elmer Kennedy-Andrews

Part 1: Thematic and Comparative Studies<br

‘Something important had changed’: Modernisation and Irish Fiction since 1960. Patrick Walsh<br

Ivy over Imperial Ireland: The Irish Big House Novel since 1960. Robin Marsh<br

‘Fabled by the Daughters of Memory’: History as Nightmare in Contemporary Irish Fiction. Robert Garratt<br

Shadows of the Gunmen: The Troubles Novel. Elmer Kennedy-Andrews<br

How I Achieved this Trick’: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Irish Fiction. Eamonn Hughes<br

To Say ‘I’: Female Identity in The Maid’s Tale and The Wig my Father Wore. Heidi Hansson

Part 2: Individual Author studies<br

Beckett after 1960: A Post-Humanist Context. Paul Davies<br

The Art of Science: Banville’s Doctor Copernicus. Declan Kiberd<br

‘A Shocking Libel on the People of Donegal’? The Novels of Patrick McGinley. John Goodby and Jo Furber<br

Form, Theme and Genre: The Importance of Catholics in Brian Moore’s Work. Kathleen Devine<br

The Remains of Protestantism in Maurice Leitch’s Fiction. Barry Sloan<br

Jennifer Johnston: Tremors of Memory. Richard York<br

‘All Toppers’: Children in the Fiction of John McGahern. Patrick Crotty

A Non-Book for Those who, in Revolt Today, Could be in Command Tomorrow

ISBN: 978-0-85105-259-5

Dolmen Editions XXII   viii, 255pp. 27.2 x 18.4cm

We are faced today with a number of seemingly insoluble quandaries in the fields of both Religion and Science, amongst which may be included the problem of a God that seems to all appearances to be either demonic or incompetent, of a Universe that is apparently expanding in relation to nothing but itself, of the structure of Space-Time, of the significance if any of Death, and of the everlasting conflict between the ways of thought known as realism and Idealism.

In collating various pronouncements in all of these areas that have been besetting us during the present significant century, the writer has come to a surprising conclusion that modern Science may be providing an answer to some of the quandaries of religious belief, and on the other hand, that theology in many ways is capable of coming to the rescue of the Physicists, enmeshed as they are in a tangle of contradictory facts.

A solution is probably found in the abandonment of our traditional conception of an inanimate Universe which nevertheless is explosive and kinematic, in favour of a new view of its dimensional character. The edition is limited to 1050 copies signed by the author.

Denis Johnston (1901-84) was in his turn a lawyer, playwright, war correspondent, and one of the early executives of British Television. After World War II he held a number of chairs and professorships at American Universities and Colleges until his retirement in 1973, after which he  combined further teaching with the writing of this book, to which the varied aspects of his professional life have all contributed. His study, In Search of Swift, appeared in 1959, and his account of his time as a war correspondent, Nine Rivers from Jordan, in 1953. His Dramatic Works appeared in three volumes from this company (1977, 1979, 1992).