Books
Charles Lever: The Lost Victorian

Charles Lever: The Lost Victorian

£33.00

With a Foreword by Benedict Kiely

21.6 x 13.8 cm.     170 pp.    2000     Ulster Editions & Monographs series (ISSN 0954-3392) volume 8

At the peak of his career, Charles Lever (1806-1872) was one of the most successful novelists in the English language, and the only mid-nineteenth century Irish novelist to vie with Charles Dickens in popularity and earning potential. Yet, within three decades of his death, his works had sunk into uninterrupted obscurity. The light-heartedness of his earliest novels, The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer (1839) and Charles O’Malley - the Irish Dragoon (1841), brought condemnation from Nationalists who championed the serious and didactic purpose of literature in highlighting the desperate plight of Ireland’s indigenous population. It is in Lever’s positive and thoughtful reaction to these criticisms that his profound contribution to Irish literature in English is to be identified, most of all in his sensitive and ultimately pessimistic analysis of the role of the doomed Protestant ascendancy.

In this incisive critical study, Stephen Haddelsey charts the rise and fall of this gifted and much-maligned commentator on Irish affairs, and calls for a reappraisal of his position in the canon of Irish literature.

Using a selection from the thirty novels and five volumes of essays, he argues that Lever’s contribution is unique in its evolution from a Tory and non-separatist stance to the near-overt and despairing advocacy of Home Rule in his final and greatest novel, Lord Kilgobbin (1872).

STEPHEN HADDELSEY is a graduate of the University of Wales. Working as a freelance editor and writer, he has contributed to projects ranging from a study of European ethnology and cultural identity, to historical atlases of Ancient Greece and the American Civil War. He is currently working on a novel and is planning a comparative critical biography of the Victorian novelists, Charles Lever, George Whyte-Melville and Francis Smedley.

CONTENTS:
Foreword by Benedict Kiely
Introduction: Writing on the Margins
1: The Novels of Dr Quicksilver
2: A Year of Growth
3: An Iniquitous Act
4: The Double-Sided Coin
5: The Art of Brevity
6: Lever's Anti-Heroines
7: Last Efforts
Notes
Index

 

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The Wonder and Supernatural Plays, being the Third Volume of the Collected Plays

The Wonder and Supernatural Plays, being the Third Volume of the Collected Plays

£25.00

General Editors of the Coole Edition: T.R.Henn CBE and Colin Smythe

Edited and with a Foreword by Ann Saddlemyer

22.2 x 14.00  cm.  

This volume of Lady Gregory’s Collected Plays contains all those that deal with the magic of Irish folk stories or the supernatural aspects of ghosts or religion. Those which use as their plot magic and kings' sons were written for an audience of children. In The Dragon the theatrical monster is to come and carry off the princess as all good dragons should and then be killed by a prince, but in this case the disguised prince does not kill the beast but does a transplant giving him a squirrel's heart which makes him chase off to the West Indies in search of cocoa-nuts.

For her adult audiences, Lady Gregory wrote her Irish passion play, The Story Brought by Brigit, and Shanwalla, a play about the drugging of a prize racehorse just before a race. The innocence of the accused trainer is only proved after the appearance of the ghost of the trainer's murdered wife who sup­plies particularly relevant informa­tion which shakes the villain into a confession. The third act of this play was not as good as it might have been, and after Yeats had criticised it Lady Gregory rewrote the first part, published here for the first time. The original act, together with Yeats' criticisms, are included in an Appendix. The other plays in this volume are what Lady Gregory called her “first play”, Colman & Guaire; her beautiful miracle play set in the West of Ireland, The Travelling Man; The Full Moon; Aristotle's Bellows and Dave.

Volume I of the Collected Plays contains the Comedies; Volume II The Tragedies and Tragic-Comedies, and Volume IV the Translations, Adaptations and Collaborations. Each volume is edited and has a foreword by Professor Saddlemyer.

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Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland

Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland

£8.99 pbk reprinting

General Editors of the Coole Edition: T.R.Henn CBE and Colin Smythe

With an introduction by Elizabeth Coxhead

21.6 x 13.8 cm. ISBN: 978-0-901072-36-8   

Visions & Beliefs in the West of Ireland has been a classic among folklore collections since its first publication in 1920. Lady Gregory started collecting the stories from local people in Clare and West Galway in the 1890s, and in the early years was often accompanied on her trips by W.B.Yeats. Both found the tales a valuable source for their work. Originally intended as a joint project, the two volume collection (here published as a single book) finally appeared under Lady Gregory's name, but Yeats provided notes and two essays, `Witches and Wizards and Irish Folk-Lore' and `Swedenborg, Mediums & the Desolate Places', both of which appear here.

Many aspects of the supernatural are presented, and there are stories about seers, healers, charms, banshees, fairy forts, the evil eye – this is a treasure trove of west Irish folk-beliefs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Elizabeth Coxhead, who died in 1979, was a journalist, critic, broadcaster and novelist. She was also the author of Lady Gregory, A Literary Portrait (1961, revised 1966), the first book to be published exclusively about Lady Gregory, and Daughters of Erin (1965, republished 1979). which contains biographies of five leading women of the Irish Literary Revival period, Maude Gonne, Constance Markievicz, Sarah Purser, and Sally (Sarah) and Molly Allgood.

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The Tragedies and Tragic-Comedies, being the Second Volume of the Collected Plays

The Tragedies and Tragic-Comedies, being the Second Volume of the Collected Plays

£22.50

General Editors of the Coole Edition: T.R.Henn CBE and Colin Smythe

Edited and with a foreword by Ann Saddlemyer

22.2 x 14.0 cm.     
 

Although Lady Gregory's first plays were comedies, she preferred writing tragedies which she found easier. As Ann Saddlemyer writes in her foreword to this volume: "In the tragic form, with the character of comedy deliberately left out, one could celebrate strength where 'fate itself is the protagonist'. 'You may let your hero kick or struggle, but he is in the claws all the time.' "

Lady Gregory wrote five traged­ies, The Gaol Gate, Dervorgilla, Grania, McDonough's Wife and Kincora. Kincora gave her the most trouble in writing, perhaps because, as she herself thought ‘I kept too close to history’', and she had to ask Yeats and Synge for their help. It exists in two versions, the first of which appears in the Appendix of this volume.

This volume also contains the Tragic-Comedies, The White Cock­ade, The Canavans, The Image (which with The Gaol Gate was her favourite) and The Deliverer, the only bitter play Lady Gregory ever wrote.

Volume I of the Collected Plays contains the Comedies, Volume III, Wonder and the Supernatural, and Volume IV, Translations, Adapta­tions and Collaborations. Each volume is edited and has a fore­word by Professor Saddlemyer.

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Selected Plays of Lady Gregory

Selected Plays of Lady Gregory

£10.95 pbk

Chosen and Introduced by Mary FitzGerald

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

Hardcover ISBN: 0-86140-099-2 / 978-0-86140-99-7 £25.00
Paperback ISBN: 0-86140-100-X / 978-0-86140-100-0 £9.99
21.6 x 13.8 cm. 379 pp. 1983

Contains: The Travelling Man, Spreading the News, Kincora, Hyacinth Halvey, The Doctor in Spite of Himself, The Gaol Gate, The Rising of the Moon, Dervorgilla, The Workhouse Ward, Grania, The Golden Apple, The Story Brought by Brigit, Dave, Lady Gregory on playwriting and her plays, bibliographical checklist.

Lady Gregory wrote her first play when she was forty-nine years old. Apart from her collaborations with W. B. Yeats and others, and translated adaptations, she produced thirty-nine plays, while devoting a great deal of time to the management of the Abbey Theatre, and the Lane Pictures.

Described with admiration by Bernard Shaw as the Irish Molière, she contributed plays in every genre – comedies, tragedies, tragic-comedies, wonder and supernatural plays - and for every audience, most effectively in the one act form.

This collection of thirteen plays, and her writings about them, is intended to show the breadth of her playwriting abilities, and her thoughts on the plays and their creation. Chosen, with an introduction, by Mary FitzGerald, this third volume in the Irish Literary Studies series has a bibliographical checklist by Colin Smythe.

Mary FitzGerald gained her PhD from Princeton University for work on Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats, and taught at Fordham University before taking up her appointment at the University of New Orleans. She was Review Editor of Yeats: An Annual of Critical and Textual Studies.

 

 

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Poets and Dreamers

Poets and Dreamers

£30.00

General Editors of the Coole Edition: T. R. Henn CBE and Colin Smythe

With a Foreword by T. R. Henn

ISBN: 978-0-900675-35-5

Studies and Translations from the Irish, including nine plays by Douglas Hyde

22.7 x 13.8 cm.  286 pp.    illus.  1974   Volume 11 of the Coole Edition of Lady Gregory's works

In Poets and Dreamers Lady Gregory has gathered together a number of essays and translations she had made from the Irish of Douglas Hyde, An Craoibhin Aoibhinn, ‘the Sweet Little Branch’, who was founder and President of the Gaelic League at the time and later to be the first President of the Republic of Ireland.

Lady Gregory has also written about other poets in this volume, notably Raftery, who was the model for Yeats’s Red Hanrahan, and also writes about West Irish ballads, and those by Jacobite and Boer and that beautiful poem by the expatriate Shemus Cartan, ‘A Sorrowful Lament for Ireland’.

Her other essays are covered by the Dreamers part of the title, ‘Mountain Theology’, ‘Herb Healing’ and ‘Workhouse Dreams’ among them. This edition contains a further five plays by Hyde, translated by Lady Gregory, three of which have not hitherto been published.

The Ap­pendices contain a number of early versions of poems and articles and includes ‘Dreams that have no moral’ by W. B. Yeats. This has been added from his Celtic Twilight (1902) as an Appendix in order to give an example as to how Lady Gregory worked together with him in providing him with material for his volumes. Lady Gregory refers to the story in ‘Workhouse Dreams’.

The Editors have also added a quant­ity of her revisions and an essay, ‘Cures by Charms’, which first appeared in the Westminster Budget with two of the other essays in this volume, but which was not included in the first edition.

 

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Mr Gregory’s Letter-Box, 1813-35

Mr Gregory’s Letter-Box, 1813-35

£30.00

General Editors of the Coole Edition: T.R.Henn CBE and Colin Smythe

With a Foreword by Jon Stallworthy

ISBN: 978-0-900675-41-6

While the editing of Sir William Gregory's Autobiography was largely a matter of shortening the manuscript, Mr. Gregory's Letter-Box was a much greater editorial effort, for Lady Gregory had to create linking passages for the letters, filling in the social and historical background.

Mr. Gregory's experience in the post was unequalled: he held it for eighteen years and saw Viceroys and Chief Secretaries come and go. Not for nothing was he said to be the real ruler of Ireland. He served under five Viceroys – Lords Whitworth, Talbot, Wellesley, Anglesey, and Northumberland — and seven Chief Secretaries, the most important being Robert Peel (later Prime Minister), Charles Grant, Henry Goulburn and William Lamb (later Lord Melbourne, and Prime Minister).

Little more than a decade before Mr. Gregory's appointment, Ireland had lost its Parliament, and he had to carry out policies decided upon by a government who found it difficult to understand the Irish situation, and had no sympathy with the Roman Catholic majority of the population. Thus Mr. Gregory's term of office was dominated by the Napoleonic War, periodic disturbances, famines, the visit of King George IV, teaching his various superiors 'the ropes', and maintaining as smooth government as possible during the mounting campaign for Catholic Emancipation. The Letter-Box therefore supplies anyone interested in the period with a fascinating and valuable insight into an important epoch of Irish history.

Mr. Gregory's Letter-Box was first published in 1898 in a small edition which has been out of print for well over half a century. This volume has additional material intended for inclusion in a later edition which Lady Gregory kept in her copy of the book, as well as an extensive biographical index, doubling as notes for the text.

 

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Lady Gregory’s  Journals, Books 30-44: 21 February 1925 – 9 May 1932

Lady Gregory’s Journals, Books 30-44: 21 February 1925 – 9 May 1932

£45.00

General Editors of the Coole Edition: T.R.Henn CBE and Colin Smythe

Edited by Daniel J. Murphy, with an Afterword by Colin Smythe

ISBN: 978-0-900675-92-8

21.4 x 13.8 cm.      frontis.   t.e.g.

Lennox Robinson's selection from Lady Gregory's Journals was pub­lished in 1946. It only contained a small fraction of the total material that she typed out (editing as she did so) from her manuscript diaries. In 1964 the bulk of Lady Gregory's archives were bought by the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, and the typescripts of her diaries, which formed part of the archive, were prepared for publica­tion by the present editor, Daniel Murphy. The first volume of this edition, containing Books 1 to 29, was published in 1978. This second volume, contain­ing Books 30 to 44, not only completes the typed version of her diaries (which ended in November 1930), but also adds the unedited text of the manuscript diary she kept from then until a fortnight before her death.

It describes her continuing efforts to get the Lane Pictures returned to Ireland, the passing of Coole into the hands of the Irish Forestry Depart­ment, Abbey Theatre problems, the row over Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars and the break with him over its refusal of The Silver Tassie, Denis Johnston's connection with the Abbey as producer and playwright (with illu­minating insights into the Abbey's refusal of The Old Lady Says 'No!’), and other controversial matters.

Plagued by rheumatism and twice operated on for cancer, Lady Greg­ory was nevertheless determined not to give in to old age, and she relates the daily battle with her infirmities with objectivity.

Thus, with W. B. Yeats's account of her last hours, ‘The Death of Lady Gregory’, published here for the first time, the reader is given a far more complete picture of the last years of Lady Gregory's life than has hitherto been available.

Appended to this is an Afterword by Colin Smythe which describes the problems relating to the publication of the Journals and Autobiography following Lady Gregory’s death.

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Lady Gregory’s Journals, Books 1-29: 10 October 1916 – 24 February 1925

Lady Gregory’s Journals, Books 1-29: 10 October 1916 – 24 February 1925

£45.00

General Editors of the Coole Edition: T.R.Henn CBE and Colin Smythe

Edited and with a Foreword by Daniel J. Murphy

ISBN: 978-0-900675-91-1

21.4. x 13.8 cm.   .  frontis, t.e.g.

Lennox Robinson's selection from Lady Gregory's Journals was first published in 1946 as the culmination of many years' nego­tiations between the Trustees of Lady Gregory's Estate and her London publishers, Putnam & Co., but it was only a fraction of the material that Lady Gregory had expected would be published when she sent the typescripts over to London in 1931.

Since the publication of that small selection (which appeared in the U.S.A. in 1947), no one saw the complete typescripts until they were purchased as part of the Lady Gregory archives by the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library in 1964. After being cata­logued, they were made available to scholars. Now at last, Daniel Murphy's edition is available in two volumes, the first containing Books 1 to 29 and the second Books 30 to 44.

The Journals contain fascinating accounts of Lady Gregory's efforts to get back the Lane Pictures for Ireland, the Troubles, her activities at the Abbey Theatre, her life at Coole and her determination to keep it for her grandson Richard, as well as recording her friendship with W. B. Yeats, one of the most important and influential in English literature: thus the Journals are important for social and political as well as for artistic reasons, and are a prime source for all students of the literature and history of Ireland. They also provide a remarkable insight into the life and work of a woman whom Bernard Shaw called 'one of the most remarkable theatrical talents of our time' and 'the greatest living Irishwoman'.

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Gods and Fighting Men: The Story of the Tuatha de Danaan and of the Fianna of Ireland

Gods and Fighting Men: The Story of the Tuatha de Danaan and of the Fianna of Ireland

£8.99 pbk reprinting

General Editors of the Coole Edition: T.R.Henn CBE and Colin Smythe

With a Foreword by Daniel Murphy

ISBN: 978-0-901072-37-5
21.6 x 13.8 cm.      370 pp.  1976  paperback edition of the third volume of the Coole Edition of Lady Gregory's works, published in 1970

A collection of Irish myths and legends collected at the beginning of the century by Lady Gregory. Introduced by W.B. Yeats, this work is of enormous cultural influence. Includes stories of Lugh, Mananaan, the Children of Lir, Tuatha de Danaan, Fin MacCumhal, the Fianna, Oisin, and Diarmuid and Grania.

Gods and Fighting Men was first published in 1904, two years after Cuchulain of Muirthemne, and complements that work. It contains the other mythological histories of early Ireland, the stories of Lugh, of Manannan, the Children of Lir, the coming of the Tuatha de Danaan, as well as those that deal with Oisin, Finn MacCumhal, the Fianna and their exploits, and Diarmuid and Grania.

Lady Gregory collected the stories from many original sources, and in translating them from the early Irish and putting them down in ‘Kiltartanese’ (English with Gaelic syntax), a style called after the townland close to her home Coole Park, where such language was common, she created a unified group of tales that – with Cuchulain of Muirthemne – made a greater impact on people’s appreciation of the wealth and strength of Irish mythology than any other similar work.

Their influence was increased by the Prefaces that the poet W. B. Yeats wrote for each volume, praising their contents. In the Preface to this volume Yeats claimed that when children ‘imagine a country for themselves, it is always a country where one can wander without aim, and where one can never know from one place what another will be like, or know from one day’s adventure what may meet one with tomorrow’s sun. I had wished to become a child again that I might find this book, that not only tells one of such a country, but is fuller than any other book that tells of heroic life, of the childhood that is all folklore, dearer to me than all the books of the western world.’ It is not surprising that Yeats used Lady Gregory’s versions of the tales for many of his plays.

Gods and Fighting Men and Cuchulain of Muirthemne are two of the most important works to have come out of Ireland in the opening years of the twentieth century, not only for their influence on others, but because here, for the first time, readable versions of the Irish myths were made available to the general public. The two books have since then introduced generations of new readers to these great tales.

This edition contains all Lady Gregory’s final corrections for the book, Yeats’s Preface and a foreword by the late Daniel J. Murphy, Professor Emeritus of English Literature, Baruch College, City University of New York.

The cover design is by Jim Fitzpatrick.

CONTENTS

Dedication to the Members of the Irish Literary Society of New York. Signed Augusta Gregory
Foreword by Daniel Murphy
Preface. Signed W.B.Yeats
Part I. THE GODS
Book I. The Coming of the Tuatha de Danaan
The Fight with the Firbolgs – The Reign of Bres
Book II. Lugh of the Long Hand
The Coming of Lugh – The Sons of Tuireann – The Great Battle of Magh Tuireadh – The Hidden House of Lugh
Book III. The Coming of the Gael
The Landing – The Battle of Tailltin
Book IV. The Ever-Living Living Ones
Bodb Dearg – The Dagda – Angus Og – The Morrigu – Aine – Aoibhell – Midhir and Etain – Manannan – Manannan at Play – His Call to Bran – His Three Calls to Cormac – Cliodhna’s Wave – His Call to Connla –Tadg in Manannan’s Islands – Laegaire in the Happy Plain
Book V. The Fate of The Children of Lir

Part II. THE FIANNA
Book I. Finn, Son of Cumhal
The Coming of Finn – Finn’s Household – Birth of Bran – Oisin’s Mother – The Best Men of the Fianna
Book II. Finn’s Helpers
The Lad of the Skins – Black, Brown, and Grey – The Hound – Red Ridge
Book III. The Battle of the White Strand
The Enemies of Ireland – Cael & Credhe (an earlier version was published in The Green Sheaf, no.5, 1903) – Conn Crither – Glas, Son of Dremen – The Help of the Men of Dea – The March of the Fianna – The First Fighters – The King of Ulster’s Son – The High King’s Son – The King of Lochlann and his Sons – Labran’s Journey – The Great Fight – Credhe’s Lament
Book IV. Huntings and Enchantments
The King of Britain’s Son – The Cave of Ceiscoran – Donn, Son of Midhir – The Hospitality of Cuanna’s House – Cat-Heads and Dog-Heads – Lomna’s Head – Ilbrec of Ess Ruadh – The Cave of the Cruachan – The Wedding at Conn Slieve – The Shadowy One – Finn’s Madness – The Red Woman – Finn and the Phantoms – The Pigs of Angus – The Hunt of Slieve Cuilinn
Book V. Oisin’s Children
Book VI. Diarmuid
Birth of Diarmuid – How Diarmuid got his Love-Spot – The Daughter of King Under-Wave – The Hard Servant – The House of the Quicken Trees
Book VII. Diarmuid and Grania
The Flight of Teamhair – The Pursuit – The Green Champions – The Wood of Dubhros – The Quarrel – The Wanderers – Fighting and Peace – The Boar of Beinn Gulbain
Book VIII. Cnoc-an-Air
Taile, Son of Treon – Meargach’s Wife – Ailne’s Revenge
Book IX. The Wearing Away of the Fianna
The Quarrel with the Sons of Morna – Death of Goll – The Battle of Gabhra
Book X. The End of the Fianna
The Death of Bran – The Call of Oisin – The Last of the Great Men
Book XI. Oisin and Patrick
Oisin’s Story – Oisin in Patrick’s House – The Arguments – Oisin’s Lament
Notes
The Apology
The Age and Origin of the Stories of the Fianna
The Authorities
The Pronunciation
The Place Names

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Lady Gregory’s Diaries 1892-1902

Lady Gregory’s Diaries 1892-1902

£35.00

Edited by James Pethica

ISBN: 978-0-86140-306-6

22.3 x 15.5 cm.    with 16 pp. with 36 illus.

These diaries, covering the decade or so following the death of her husband in 1892 until they peter out in 1902, chart the course of Lady Gregory's gradual but remarkable remaking of her life. Widowed at thirty-nine, with a London social circle composed mainly of her husband's friends, broadly Unionist in her political views, and with only a few minor publications to her name, she was by her fiftieth year an influential Nationalist, close friend of the major figures of the Irish literary movement, widely acknowledged as the hostess of a `workshop of genius' at Coole Park, and on the threshold of lasting literary prominence in her own right.

The rich account these pages give of Lady Gregory's life in the 1890s and of her deepening friendship with and patronage of W.B.Yeats radically changes the existing image of her evolution as an Irish writer and Nationalist. As the only contemporary diary kept by a major figure in the Irish literary movement during these years, their day-to-day record of the summer visits of Synge, George Moore, AE, Hyde and others to Coole, of the early years of the Irish Literary Theatre, and of the swiftly changing allegiances and tensions in her extensive literary circle, provides a revealing and frequently corrective counterweight to the narratives of these years written long afterwards (in the light of later autobiographical imperatives) by Yeats, Moore, Lady Gregory herself and others.

James Pethica was born in England and educated at Oxford, and is currently Assistant Professor of English at the University of Richmond, Virginia. He has published a number of articles on Yeats and Lady Gregory, and is at present completing a book on their literary partnership and creative collaborations. His edition of Yeats's Last Poems was published in the Cornell Yeats series in 1997.

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Cuchulain of Muirthemne: The Story of the Men of the Red Branch of Ulster

Cuchulain of Muirthemne: The Story of the Men of the Red Branch of Ulster

£8.99 pbk

General Editors of the Coole Edition: T.R.Henn CBE and Colin Smythe

With a Foreword by Daniel Murphy

ISBN: 978-0-900675-85-0

21.6 x 13.8 cm

Here are the myths and legends of early Ireland as translated and written down by Lady Gregory, and published in 1902. This volume has a Preface by W.B. Yeats, who described it as `the best book that has ever come out of Ireland', and `the chief part of Ireland's gift of the imagination of the world'. Legends include: the Hound of Cuchulain and the Men of the Red Branch of Ulster.

Contents
Dedication of the Irish Edition to the People of Kiltartan
Foreword by Daniel Murphy
Preface. Signed W. B. Yeats, March 1902.
Birth of Cuchulain
Boy Deeds of Cuchulain
The Courting of Emer
Bricriu’s Feast, and the War of the Words of the Women of Ulster
The Championship of Ulster
The High King of Ireland
Fate of the Children of Usnach
The Dream of Angus
Cruachan
The Wedding of Maine Morgor
The War for the Bull of Cuailgne
The Awakening of Ulster
The Two Bulls
The Only Jealousy of Emer
Advice to a Prince
The Sons of Doel Dermai
Battle of Rosnaree
The Only Son of Aoife
Death of Cuchulain
Note by W. B. Yeats on The Conversation of Cuchulain and Emer. (Pages 32-34)

Notes. Signed A.G.

 

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Me & Nu, Childhood at Coole

Me & Nu, Childhood at Coole

£8.99

Illustrated by Joyce Dennys.
With a prefatory note by Maurice Collis

ISBN: 978-0-86140-010-2
19.0 x 13.5 cm.   128 pp.  1978 (reduced facsimile of first 1970 hardcover edition)

Lady Gregory was the cornerstone of the Irish Literary Revival in the first quarter of the century. At Coole Park in Co. Galway she was host to many literary figures and painters of the time: W. B. Yeats of course, J. M. Synge, Bernard Shaw, Douglas Hyde, A. E. (George W. Russell), Sean O'Casey, John Masefield, George Moore, and among the painters, J. B. Yeats the elder, Jack B. Yeats and Augustus John.

As well as spending a large part of her time as hostess of Coole, being a prolific author and playwright, a Director of the Abbey Theatre, the chief campaigner for the return of the Lane Pictures to Dublin, and an excellent landlord, she is remembered as a great personality.

This book is written by one of her grandchildren, Anne, who, with her brother and sister, was born and brought up at Coole, and in it she gives a new dimension to what we know of Lady Gregory and her guests.

As Maurice Collis writes in his Prefatory Note, ‘The narrative is Anne Gregory's recollection of what living at Coole with her grandmother was like. Her account is very cleverly constructed. The stature of Lady Gregory is subtly increased. She was a wonderful woman and a wonderful grandmother.’

'One of the most delightful books I have ever read ... a truly lovable book.' Gabriel Fallon in The Evening Press

'A charming book and Joyce Dennys's pictures are a delight.’ The Spectator

‘a MUST for children of ALL ages.' Sunday Independent

‘The book shows us the great through a child's eyes, skilfully, wittily, and sometimes surprisingly.' British Book News

 

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The Selected Prose of John Gray

The Selected Prose of John Gray

£30.00

Edited by Jerusha Hull McCormack

Publication of Ian Fletcher’s The Poems of John Gray (1988) was welcomed by reviewers in the U.S. and England. Now ELT Press offers a companion vol­ume, The Selected Prose of John Gray.

It complements the poetry by printing essays and short stories chosen from different periods of Gray's life – some selections previously unpublished, others having appeared only in limited periodical circulation.

This new book adds to our understanding of Gray and topics relevant to the era. Professor McCormack explains the importance of the prose in her introduction: ‘Gray has a significance for his time as a writer who has made the transition from the mannered decadence of “The Modem Actor" to the cryptic pre-modernist narrative of Park (1932). As such, his work helps us recon­struct our own past: in particular, it requires us to acknowledge that abyss which lies between the late Victorian and the years after the Great War. As one who survived, not only personally but as a writer, Gray allows us to speculate on the strategies by which he sought to bridge that chasm. And in so doing, John Gray's work may provide an example of how, on the edge of greater chasms, we may still presume to tell stories and to feel, in telling them, that they are permitted to tell us something about our experience – and ourselves.’

Professor McCormack traces the development of Gray’s life and writings in her introductory essay. She prefaces each selection with a useful headnote. Her extensive notes to the prose clarify topical allusions and make Gray’s work accessible to a wide audience.

Jerusha Hull McCormack, University College Dublin, is author of John Gray: Poet, Dandy, and Priest (University Press of New England, 1991).

Design: The book is typeset in Joanna, the stunning typeface Eric Gill designed especially for the Sheed & Ward 1932 edition of Park. Nineteen illustrations are reproduced from original printings of Gray’s writings. ELT Press’s David Schwartz has designed 14 beautifully hand-drawn initial letters for the prose. (For details on the illustrations and typography, see pages ix—x, page 316).

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The Poems And Plays of Oliver St John Gogarty

The Poems And Plays of Oliver St John Gogarty

£40.00

Collected, edited and annotated by A. Norman Jeffares

23.5 x 15.5 cm.     xxxii, 861 pp.  2001
ISBN: 978-0-86140-404-9

Poems and Plays brings together the contents of Oliver St John Gogarty’s fifteen volumes of poetry, including his Collected Poems. It also contains poems published individually in various journals and 232 hitherto unpublished poems; as well, there are his three Abbey plays – Blight, A Serious Thing and The Enchanted Trousers – published under the nom-de-plume Gideon Ouseley, together with Incurables and the incomplete Wavelengths.

Much of Gogarty’s poetry was classically inspired; his witty lyric poems have the elegant grace of Herrick or the terse eloquence of Marvell. His appreciative poems about his friends and his elegies for some of them are balanced by Martial-like satires; his enthusiastic enjoyment of beauty is matched by the encomiastic treatment of places, itself reinforced by a keen awareness of their historical and often dramatic associations.

Gogarty, the son and grandson of doctors, was born in Dublin in 1878. His novel, Tumbling in the Hay (1939; 1996) gives a sparkling account of medical student life in Dublin at the beginning of the twentieth century. When he was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin, Gogarty was befriended by the famous classical dons Tyrrell and Mahaffy and the philosopher Macran. At the same time he had a circle of contemporaries (many met earlier when he was briefly a student at University College, Dublin) known for their raffish behaviour and mocking, bawdy wit; among them were James Joyce, John (‘Citizen’) Elwood and Vincent Cosgrave. James Starkey (‘Seumas O’Sullivan’) was another contemporary companion. And Gogarty’s acquaintanceship widened to include George Moore and W.B.Yeats who, despite thirteen years difference in age, became a lifelong friend.

An all-round athlete who was a champion cyclist, who successfully rescued drowning men on three occasions, Gogarty followed up his medical degree with a spell of study in Vienna, returning to become a successful Ear, Nose and Throat Specialist in Dublin. His lively autobiographical As I was going down Sackville Street (1937; 1994) records something of the entertaining eccentricity of many of the city’s citizens in the 1920s as well as the characters of those involved in its cultural and political life.

Gogarty’s wit irradiated his exuberant conversation. Many of his Rabelaisian poems have remained unpublished until now. They circulated freely, however, in the talk of Dublin, especially among the group who met in Fanning’s public house or the Bailey, such fellow wits as George Redding and Neil Montgomery.

Gogarty, whose politically active friends included Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins and Michael Cusack, became a Senator of the Irish Free State. Kidnapped by the I.R.A. in the Irish Civil War in 1923, he escaped being shot by plunging into the River Liffey and swimming downstream to safety. Renvyle, his large house in Connemara, bought when he realised that cars made it more accessible from Dublin (he was an enthusiastic early motorist and Ireland’s first amateur aviator) was burnt down by the I.R.A. shortly afterwards. When it was rebuilt in 1930 Gogarty turned it into a hotel. There, as in Dublin, he and his wife entertained generously, their circle of friends ever-widening.

As he moved away from medicine Gogarty sold his Dublin house, 15 Ely Place, finding more time for writing in Connemara. In 1939 he went on a lecture tour in the United States and, disillusioned by de Valera’s Ireland, stayed on, supporting himself and his family (there were two sons and a daughter) in Ireland, by writing and lecturing. He came back at intervals, transport permitting, but died in New York in 1957, the year that he had decided to return permanently to Ireland.

Now that his work is being made available again, readers have the opportunity to appreciate the lively evocative writings of this Renaissance man whose poetry W.B.Yeats so admired, including more of Gogarty’s work in his Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892-1935 than of any other living poet. His poetry conveys his infective love of beauty of all kinds, the fundamental seriousness beneath his witty persiflage, his moving awareness of Time’s inexorable pressures, and his emphasis upon the need to face death with dignity.

The collection is divided under the headings chosen by Gogarty himself for Collected Poems

Part 1 - Collected Poems (1951): Odes and Addresses - Earth and Sea - Satires and Facetiae - Love and Beauty -Life and Death - Elegies.

Part 2: Poems in Various Volumes - published and unpublished, not included in Collected Poems. Hyperthuleana (1916), Secret Springs of Dublin Song (1918), The Ship and Other Poems (1918), An Offering of Swans (1923), An Offering of Swans and Other Poems (1924), Wild Apples (1928, 1929, 1930), Selected Poems (1933), Others to Adorn (1938), Elbow Room (1939), Perennial (1944, 1946), Unselected Poems (1954), Penultimate Poems (prepared but unpublished).

Part 3: Poems published in journals and unpublished volumes. Odes and Addresses - Earth and Sea - Satires and Facetiae (Dislikes and Disapprobations, Limericks, Parodies, Light-hearted Verses, Some Martello Tower Poems, Seamus O’Sullivan Poems, Poems concerning Dermot Freyer, Jesting about the Sinclair Brothers, Classical Themes, Religious Thoughts, Political Poems, On Drinking, Medical Meditations, Monto Poems) - Love and Beauty -Life and Death - Elegies.

Appendices, Notes, Notes on the texts, and Addenda, including ‘Delphi’, written as an entry for the Newdigate Prize.

 

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Supplement to ‘A Bibliography of George Moore’

Supplement to ‘A Bibliography of George Moore’

£25.00

23.5 x 15.0 cm.     xii, 96 pp.      1988

The purpose of this Supplement is to make available a portion of the new information discovered since the publication of A Bibliography, as well as to expand and correct data in the first ('Books and Pamphlets') and third ('Periodical Appearances') sections of that volume. It is an auxiliary volume, not an update.

Anyone wishing to purchase both volumes of Edwin Gilcher's bibliographies direct from the publisher may obtain them together for the reduced price of £40.00, UK post free, enquire for cost of postage overseas.

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A Bibliography of George Moore

A Bibliography of George Moore

£45.00

ISBN: / 978-0-86140-067-6

22.5 x x 15.5 cm.      xiv, 274 pp.  1970 [Northern Illinois University Press] We have purchased their entire stock, and therefore allocated a new ISBN to this book.

This is the first comprehensive bibliography in En­glish and the most complete in any language of the works of George Moore, the Anglo-Irish author whom Charles Morgan described as having ‘twice recreated the English novel’. Moore was the first critic to write in English of the Impressionist painters and of the works of Verlaine, Rimbaud, and La­forgue. In addition, he was instrumental in helping to sound the death knell of the Victorian three-decker novel, and later was a leader – with W. B. Yeats, Edward Martyn, and Lady Gregory – in Ire­land’s literary renaissance. His writings and interests have been so diverse that few realise the scope of his work. During his life­time, Moore was frequently the storm centre of one controversy or another. While leading to many amusing tales about him, this has tended to cloud his very real contribution to English literature, both as an innovator and as an accomplished artist. To achieve the perfection he constantly sought, Moore revised and rewrote probably more than any other modern .author, yet the resulting textual differences in various editions have scarcely been noted. Two previous bibliographies (both published nearly fifty years ago and more than ten years prior to Moore’s death) do not approach completeness; neither makes more than casual mention of revised texts, and neither notes translations and periodical appearances. Both limit consideration to English editions, al­though in some cases the American printings were the earliest.

This bibliography, which had its genesis more than thirty years ago, is based primarily on Edwin Gilcher’s personal collection, but every description has been checked against as many other copies as possible. It fully describes all works in first editions, both En­glish and American, and all subsequent editions con­taining substantial revisions, as well as, for the sake of collectors, the various limited and illustrated edi­tions. As far as possible all editions have been noted so that a student can quickly determine which text has been reprinted in any particular edition.

The first section, by far the longest, contains de­scriptions of all titles associated with Moore, includ­ing early works excluded by the author from the canon of his collected editions, and also pamphlets and occasional printings. The second section is de­voted to books by other authors which contain con­tributions by Moore and which reprint letters of his. The third section lists periodical printings, and this listing is the most extensive that has been made to date. The fourth section lists the books, stories, and articles translated into thirteen foreign languages. The final section gives brief accounts of titles some­times attributed to Moore, but actually not by him, and of works known to have been written by him, in­cluding a number of plays, which have never been published.

 

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Rural Ireland, Real Ireland?

Rural Ireland, Real Ireland?

£33.00

21.6 x 13.8 cm.   245pp.   1996

The aim of the present collection, which is edited by Jacqueline Genet, is to draw a picture of rural Ireland through Irish literature, from the 18th century, through the numerous rich productions of the nineteenth century, up to the present time. Starting with studies of the background to the subject by Catherine Maignant and Paul Brennan, the remaining essays, by Bernard Escarbelt, Claude Fierobe, Jean Brihault, Colin Meir, Godeleine Carpentier, Caroline MacDonogh, Declan Kiberd, Jacqueline Genet, Rene Agostini, Martin Croghan, the late Augustine Martin, Colbert Kearney, Maurice Harmon, and Danielle Jacquin, cover aspects of rural Ireland in the work of William Chaigneau, Maria Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, William Carleton, Charles J. Kickham, Lady Gregory, Douglas Hyde, W.B. Yeats, J.M. Synge, Tomas O’Crohan, Daniel Corkery, Seamus O’Kelly, Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O’Brien.

CONTENTS

The Background
Catherine Maignant: "Rural Ireland in the 19th Century and the advent of the modern world"
Paul Brennan: "Ireland's Rural Population"

Rural Ireland in Literature
Bernard Escarbelt: "William Chaigneau's Jack Connor: a literary image of the Irish peasant"
Claude Fierobe: "The peasantry in the Irish novels of Maria Edgeworth"
Jean Brihault: "Lady Morgan: Deep Furrows"
Colin Meir: "Status and style in Carleton's Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry"
Godeline Carpentier: "The peasantry in Kickham's tales and novels: an epitome mof the writer's realism, idealism and ideology"
Caroline MacDonogh: "Augusta Gregory: A Portrait of a Lady"
Declan Kiberd: " Decolonizing the mind: Douglas Hyde and Irish Ireland"
Jacqueline Genet: "Yeats and the myth of rural Ireland"
Ren‚ Agostini: "J.M.Synge's 'celestial peasants'"
Martin Craghan: "'...the great and good... the worthless and insignificant'. A case study of Tomas O'Crohan: The Island Man"
Augustine Martin: "The Past and the peasant in the stories of Seumas O'Kelly"
Colbert Kearney: "Daniel Corkery: a priest and his people"
Maurice Harmon: "Kavanagh's Old Peasant"
Danielle Jacquin: "'Cerveaux lucides is good begob': Flann O'Brien and the world of peasants"

 

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‘Ulysses’, a Review of Three Texts

‘Ulysses’, a Review of Three Texts

£30.00

21.6 x 13.8 cm.     xviii, 232 pp.   1989  The Prince Grace Irish Library series (ISSN 0269-2619) volume 4
ISBN: 976-0-86140-314-1

Feeling that none of the existing editions of Ulysses adequately represented the text of the novel, Philip Gaskell and Clive Hart looked again at the evidence of Joyce's manuscripts, typescripts, and proofs, and have produced lists of suggested alterations for the three most important editions of the book: the first edition of 1922, the standard American edition of 1961, and the so-called 'corrected' edition of 1984. They believe that a copy of any of these editions, marked up with the alterations they propose, will result in a text closer to what Joyce intended in 1922 than any that has yet been achieved. What is offered here, in fact, is not a new edition of Ulysses, but a kit for repairing the major faults of existing editions.

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International Aspects of Irish Literature

International Aspects of Irish Literature

£40.00

ISBN: 978-0-86140-363-9

21.6 x 13.8 cm.      xii, 450 pp.  1996   Irish Literary Studies series (ISSN 0140-895X) volume 44,   IASAIL Japan series volume 5

This is a selection of the papers read at the Inter­national Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature’s 1990 conference, held in Kyoto, with the theme ‘Irish Literature as an International Literature’, at which Seamus Heaney was the keynote speaker.

The collection is divided into sections: ‘Time Out of Mind’, ‘Regional Responses’, and ‘Chrono­logical Responses’, with panels on ‘Interdiction of an Artist: Samuel Beckett’ and ‘Women in Irish Writing’, the essayists being Marie Arndt, Joseph Chadwick, Joan Coldwell, Steven Connor, Richard Corballis, Martin J. Croghan, Adele M. Dalsimer, Ganesh Devy, Theo D’Haen, Eilis Dillon Mercier, Seamus Heaney, Werner Huber, Clair Hughes, Michael Kenneally, Masaki Kondo, Heinz Kosok, Junko Matoba, Peter MCMillan, Leon McNamara, Naoya Mori, Kristin Morrison, Maureen Murphy, Ciaran Murphy, Seán O h-Eidirsceoil, Mitsuko Ohno, Britta Olinder, Peter Robinson, Joseph Ronsley, Ann Saddlemyer, Tetsuro Sano, Bonnie Kime Scott, Fuyiji Tanigawa, Stanley Weintraub, Robert Welch, and summaries of papers not published in full in this volume.

There are essays on folk memory as history, folklore, place names in early Irish and Japanese literature, Irish novels in an early 19th century German court library, echoes of Ireland in New Zealand literature, Irish regionalism, magic real­ism, four essays on aspects of W. B. Yeats, four on Joyce, with others featuring Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, Lafcadio Hearn, Sean O’Casey, Jack B. Yeats, Denis Johnston, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, John Hewitt, Toni Morrison, Maria Edgeworth, Sean O’Faolain and John Butler Yeats.

 

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