Goodnight, Morning
Jo Rippier was born in Plymouth in 1935, and educated at King’s School Worcester and Emmanuel College Cambridge. He gained his Ph.D. in English Literature at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitatät, where he was a lecturer in the English Department until retiring in 1998. His previous publications include The Short Stories of Sean O’Faolain: A Study in Descriptive Techniques,and Some Postwar English Novelists, a volume of short stories, Goodnight, Morning, and collections of poetry, Seasons and Remembrance (1981), Beginnings, Endings (1991), Past Present (1996), Against the Stream (1999, with aquarelles by Gerhard Elsner), Late Motley (2001), Something Old, Something New (2007), Echoes and Reflections (2009), Footsteps (2011), The Silence of Snow (2013), Darkness and Light (2014), Shadows (2015) and Sights and Sounds (2017).
More info →Moments in Time
ISBN 978-0-86140-454-4
These short stories are in general an attempt to recapture and encapsulate aspects of a distant past that will soon have faded for ever. Tiny scenes, events and memories are brought back in the form of a reality that has, through the workings of time, become fictionalised. Who now knows what the reality actually was?
Jo Rippier was born in Plymouth in 1935, and educated at King’s School Worcester and Emmanuel College Cambridge. He gained his Ph.D. in English Literature at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitatät, where he was a lecturer in the English Department until retiring in 1998. His previous publications include The Short Stories of Sean O’Faolain: A Study in Descriptive Techniques (1976), Some Post-war English Novelists, a volume of short stories, Goodnight, Morning, and collections of poetry, Seasons and Remembrance (1981), Beginnings, Endings (1991), Past Present (1996), Against the Stream (1999, with aquarelles by Gerhard Elsner), Late Motley (2001), Something Old, Something New (2007), Echoes and Reflections (2009), Footsteps (2011), The Silence of Snow (2013), Darkness and Light (2014), and Shadows (2015).
More info →Something Old, Something New
Jo Rippier was born in Plymouth in 1935, and educated at King’s School Worcester and Emmanuel College Cambridge. He gained his Ph.D. in English Literature at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitatät, where he was a lecturer in the English Department until retiring in 1998. His previous publications include The Short Stories of Sean O’Faolain: A Study in Descriptive Techniques,and Some Postwar English Novelists, a volume of short stories, Goodnight, Morning, and collections of poetry, Seasons & Remembrance, Beginnings, Endings, Past Present and Against the Stream.
More info →Late Motley
Jo Rippier was born in Plymouth in 1935, and educated at King’s School Worcester and Emmanuel College Cambridge. He gained his Ph.D. in English Literature at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitatät, where he was a lecturer in the English Department until retiring in 1998. His previous publications include The Short Stories of Sean O’Faolain: A Study in Descriptive Techniques,and Some Postwar English Novelists, a volume of short stories, Goodnight, Morning, and collections of poetry, Seasons & Remembrance, Beginnings, Endings, Past Present and Against the Stream.
Gerhard Elsner, whose illustration appears on the front cover, was born in Senftenberg, Germany, in 1930. He was educated at the Universities of Freiburg and Karlsruhe. He has a major reputation in Germany, with pictures in art museums and public buildings in Freiburg, Tübingen, Frankfurt, Konstanz and the Deutscher Bundestag in Berlin.
More info →Echoes and Reflections
42pp. 20.4cm. 2009
This latest collection of poems by Jo Rippier reflect his love of the impact of the countryside and its scenery, of water, and of fishing, as well as childhood and school memories, and the memorials of war.
Jo Rippier was born in Plymouth in 1935, and educated at King’s School Worcester and Emmanuel College Cambridge. He gained his Ph.D. in English Literature at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitatät, where he was a lecturer in the English Department until retiring in 1998. His previous publications include The Short Stories of Sean O’Faolain: A Study in Descriptive Techniques,and Some Postwar English Novelists, a volume of short stories, Goodnight, Morning, and collections of poetry, Seasons & Remembrance, Beginnings, Endings, Past Present, Against the Stream and Late Motley.
Gerhard Elsner, who illustration appears on the front cover, was born in Senftenberg, Germany, in 1930. He was educated at the Universities of Freiburg and Karlsruhe. He has a major reputation in Germany, with pictures in art museums and public buildings in Freiburg, Tübingen, Frankfurt, Konstanz and the Deutscher Bundestag in Berlin.
More info →Kate O’Brien, a Literary Portrait
21.6 x 13.8 cm
Although Kate O’Brien is coming to be classed among the most original novelists of this century, her reputation underwent the usual period of eclipse that follows the decease of most writers. Now, just twelve years after her death in 1974, her novels are coming back into favour on both sides of the Atlantic.
At first glance, a romantic realist whose field of operations was the rise of the middle-class from post-Famine Ireland to the second half of the present century, on closer inspection she will be seen to be a subtly feminist writer whose heroines are in search of both freedom and love, freedom as a pre-requisite of love – and education as the first necessity of either.
Highly responsive though she was to the lyrical beauty of the Irish landscape and appreciative of Irish wit and charm, she was, nevertheless, contemptuous of narrow nationalistic claims, and would set Ireland always among the nations of Europe. Long before Europe set up its present Economic Community, of which Ireland in due course became a member state, she saw her country as linked by old associations of religion, history and culture to a continental civilisation.
Readers of a generation new to Kate O’Brien see her as depicting an Ireland they scarcely knew existed, an educated, aspiring, sometimes wealthy middle-class Ireland. On one side of her, just before her beginnings as an artist, lies the wild Ireland of the dispossessed, and on the other the Ireland of what she called the ‘Top People’, whose sole criterion is success in making money, and whom she despised.
This is the first study of Kate O’Brien’s novels as a whole, in which her development as a writer is traced and the underlying themes of her work revealed.
Yeats the Initiate. Essays on certain themes in the writings of W.B.Yeats
For many years Kathleen Raine has been known as the leading exponent of what she herself calls ‘the learning of the imagination’ in the work of Blake, Yeats and other poets and scholars within (using the word in its broadest sense) the Platonic tradition. Yeats the Initiate contains all Dr Raine’s essays on Yeats, covering many aspects of the traditions and influences that informed his great poetry. Several of her essays in this field are already regarded as definitive evaluations of their subjects and these, with other hitherto uncollected studies and some new papers here printed for the first time, all fully illustrated and annotated, make Yeats the Initiate one of the most important publications of recent years in the field of Yeats studies.
The essays collected in Yeats the Initiate include ‘Hades Wrapped in Cloud’, a study of Yeats and the occult, Dr Raine’s introduction to Yeats’s collections published as Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland, and three major studies previously published separately – Yeats, the Tarot and the Golden Dawn; From Blake to ‘A Vision’ and ‘Death-in-Life’ and ‘Life-in-Death’. A major paper on ‘Yeats on Kabir’ is printed for the first time, as is a topographical paper on the Sligo area in the West of Ireland. A long essay on Yeats’s debt to Blake has been extensively revised, and other topics discussed include the play Purgatory, Yeats’s contemporary, Æ (G.W.Russell, the visionary), and Kathleen Raine’s own poetic debt to Yeats.
The essays that make up this volume reflect a lifetime’s knowledge presented with the fine perception of a great poet. The many illustrations form a graphic accompaniment to the text. It is essential reading for all students of the life and work of William Butler Yeats.
The Oracle in the Heart
This collection contains poems written between 1974 and 1978. These are the works of a visionary in the lineage of Blake and Coleridge, Shelley and Yeats who invokes the ancient wisdom of this rich heritage.
More info →Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period
Vol 1 ISBN: 0-86140-272-3 / 978-0-901072-272-4 £30.00 <br
Vol 2 ISBN:0-86140-273-1 / 978-0-901072-273-1 £30.00 <br
The Pair ISBN: 0-901072-40-0 / 978-0-901072-40-5 £60.00 Originally advertised as Ireland and Romanticism, Patrick Rafroidi’s work is a revised and updated translation of his much acclaimed L’Irlande et le romantisme (1972). It is now published for the first time in English in two volumes, the first a study of the period and its authors, and the second an important work of reference on all the Irish literary figures of the time. The study is divided into three sections, ‘Prelude to Romanticism’, ‘Nationalist Romanticism’, and ‘The Impact of Irish Romanticism’, with extensive notes and an index. Professor Rafroidi studies the causes of the movement, how it was influenced by political and literary landmarks of the time, and how the authors themselves influenced others, not only in England but also in the United States, in France and in Germany, and their rediscovery and use of Ireland’s early history and myths. The reference section contains a general bibliography, bio-bibliographies of the Irish authors whose work was published between 1789 and 1850, information as to the performances of their plays in the most important theatres in the British Isles, and a list of the principal Irish periodicals of the time. This is therefore a most useful work for all those interested in the period, and the bibliographies make it an essential work of reference which all libraries and students of Anglo-Irish Literature will need on their shelves, for continuous referral.
Irish Poetry after Feminism
These essays are revised versions of lectures given at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco, and address some of the most exciting developments in Irish poetry over the last thirty years, concentrating especially on the work of Derek Mahon, Medbh McGuckian, Vona Groarke and Sinéad Morrissey. Irish Poetry after Feminism also includes forthright debate between the contributors about the relations between ideology and poetics. Gathering some of the finest critics, the volume makes an important contribution to one of the central debates about Irish literature.
'Feminism and Irish poetry are . . . natural allies, not antagonists; to posit them otherwise is to declare the redundancy of art in its capacity to change lives on its own terms. With such an understanding, students of the topic of Irish poetry after feminism are released to seek out its neglected aspect in an investigation of Irish feminism after poetry, in confidence that relations of hospitality and exchange, rather than those of absolutism and hierarchy, can be expected to prevail between the art form and the intellectual, social and political tradition concerned.' Catriona Clutterbuck
CONTENTS<br
Justin Quinn: Introduction<br
Moynagh Sullivan. Irish Poetry after Feminism: In Search of 'Male Poets' <br
Peter McDonald. The Touch of a Blind Man: Forms, Origins and 'Hermeneutics' in Poetry <br
Catriona Clutterbuck. An Unapproved Alliance: Feminism and Form in the Irish Poetry Debate <br
Derek Mahon: First Principles <br
Fran Brearton. On Derek Mahon's 'First Principles' <br
Lucy Collins. Northeast of Nowhere: Vona Groarke, Sinéad Morrissey and Post-Feminist Spaces <br
Selina Guinness. The Annotated House: Feminism and Form <br
Leontia Flynn. On the Sofa: Parody & McGuckian <br
David Wheatley. That They May Be Damned: Samuel Beckett and the Poetry of Misogyny</i
Not a Word of a Lie
ISBN 978-1-873821-01-5
Not a Word of a Lie is an evocative portrait of growing up in the West of Ireland. Recalling her childhood and youth in Duras, a narrow peninsula jutting out into Galway Bay, about four miles from the nearby town of Kinvara, Bridie Conroy-Quinn describes the small, self-contained farming community in which she grew up with affection and humour, but also with an acute understanding of the small tragedies and injustices that sometimes disturbed the normally tranquil pattern of the yearly round.
Bridie Quinn-Conroy was born and raised in Duras. Educated at Duras National School and Seamount College, she trained as a primary school teacher in Carysfort Training College, Dublin. She taught schools in South Galway and was Vice-President of Craughwell N.S. until she took early retirement in 1989. Married to Michael Conroy, she has four children.
More info →Francis Warner’s Poetry: A Critical Assessment
The poetry of Francis Warner is unlike that of any of his contemporaries in its blend of passion and scholarship. It is the work of a mind steeped in the great traditions of poetry – work that is learned and allusive, but simultaneously intense in its lyricism.
Glyn Pursglove, author of an earlier study of Warner's plays Francis Warner and Tradition, provides a detailed account of this fascinating body of work, demonstrating both its indebtedness to tradition and its profound originality. In a manner both scholarly and sensitive he clarifies the complex craftsmanship of Warner's major poems and demonstrates the extraordinary formal inventiveness which characterises so much of his work.
Central to Francis Warner's achievement as a lyrical poet are several remarkable sequences of love poems. Theses are here afforded a poem-by-poem examination so that readers will find their pleasure in them enhanced by these meticulous and lively studies.
For all his attention to the detail of the poems, Glyn Pursglove does not neglect the larger themes that give continuity to Warner’s work. The reaffirmation of biblical and classical concepts of love – not just as a scholarly exercise but felt in the ' blood – is at the heart of all of his work as a poet and as a dramatist. It was perhaps inevitable that a poet so steeped in the lyrical forms of the Renaissance (the canzone, the madrigal, and above all the sonnet) should eventually turn his attention to Verse Drama. This study closes fittingly with two lengthy chapters devoted to Warner's verse plays Moving Reflections and Living Creation, theatrical and poetic explorations of love and creativity set in the age of the Gospels and Renaissance Florence.
When Francis Warner's Collected Poems appeared in 1985, The Scotsman described him as 'one of the most adroit and adventurous of living English poets' and observed that 'it is about time that critical appreciation caught up with him'. Glyn Pursglove's assessment answers that demand.
More info →The Literary Works of Jack B. Yeats
There is far more to Jack Yeats than meets the eye, and it is to be hoped that he will soon be recognised as deserving of a place in the forefront of Irish letters. In recent years, however, his greatness as a painter has eclipsed his writings and this work seeks to redress the position. John Purser brings a knowledge of symbolism and language used in the West of Ireland to his study, and with the aid of previously unused evidence and a new chronology, new interpretations are given for many of Jack Yeats's works and an overall pattern is revealed.
The religious imagery of The Careless Flower and The Amaranthers is developed, and the significance of the theme of inheritance in the latter work is brought out for the first time, allowing the two halves of the novel to be seen more clearly as an integrated whole. The Charmed Life is shown to have an underlying Faustian and Christian significance, related to the progress of Ireland as a nation, and Ah Well is interpreted as a remarkable fable of a kind of Eden in reverse. Harlequin's Positions is interpreted as a riposte to Shaw and an assertion of Ireland's need and ability to maintain her independence in the face of the approaching war, and La La Noo, The Green Wave and In Sand are seen in part as approving extensions of that theme.
As well as his father, major literary figures recognised his genius – Synge (who shared a journey and vision of Ireland with him), Joyce (who recognised a shared methodology), his brother (who knew that few would recognise Jack's genius, though he saw it himself), and Beckett (who learned much from him and wrote in profound admiration of The Amaranthers). One day John Butler Yeats's prophecy, 'Some day I shall be remembered as the father of a great poet, and the poet is Jack', will come true.
More info →Irishness in a Changing Society
In late May 1986, following the success of its first annual conference in 1985, the Princess Grace Irish Library hosted its second conference. It was attended by over thirty scholars, writers, journalists and policy-makers, who heard and gave papers concerning the concept of national identity, north and south of the Border.
This collection of the papers given at the conference has a wide-ranging appeal to anyone interested in what Irishness means. The lectures were delivered by experts in many fields: religion, history, politics, literature, economics and philosophy. The cross-currents and exchange of information and ideas between their various disciplines combined to present an exciting and thought-provoking view of Irishness as it has evolved, and is continuing to evolve today.
The contributors include R.V.Comerford, Hugh Leonard, Louis le Brocquy, Patrick Rafroidi, Maurice Harmon, Terence Brown, Richard Kearney, Mary E. Daly, Joseph Lee, David Harkness, John A. Murphy, Dermot Keogh, Maurice Goldring, Mark Mortimer, Garret Fitzgerald, John Hume, and Andy O'Mahony.
More info →Ireland and the Celtic Connection
In his lecture given at the Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco, in September 1985, Professor Glanville Price surveys relations between Ireland and the other Celtic nations from prehistoric times to the late twentieth century. The lecture is supplemented by an up-to-date bibliography of some 500 items compiled by Morfydd E.Owen that will serve as an introduction to the study of such fields as the archaeology, history and art of the ancient Celts and the history, languages, literature and folklore of the modern Celtic nations (Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany).
More info →The Celtic Connection
The Celtic nations of Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Scotland and Wales are well known for their literature, mythology, poetry and song. This volume is a study of the linguistic and literary achievements of those nations and provides a much-needed overview of the condition of all the Celtic languages. By emphasising the connection, these studies taken together illuminate the whole Celtic domain.
As the Editor points out, the Celtic identity is not one of race – the genetic links, if they are there at all, just cannot be proved – but it is of a common linguistic and cultural heritage. The Celtic Connection focuses on the similarities and differences in language across the Celtic nations and contributes to the resurgence of interest in the Celtic identity which is increasingly being supported by official bodies, both national and international.
The collection commences with a description of the languages and origins of early Celtic society. Each language is then examined by a leading expert in linguistics and literature. All the contributors have written their contributions keeping in mind the theme of the title – the extent to which links among the Celtic peoples have (or, indeed, have not) been significant.
Contents: The Celtic Languages (Glanville Price) – The Early Celts (Miranda J. Green) – The Irish Language (Máirtín Ó Murchú) – Early Irish Literature (Pádraig Ó Riain) – Post-Norman Irish Literature (Séamus Mac Mathúna) – The Scottish Gaelic Language (John MacInnes) – Scottish Gaelic Literature (Derek S. Thomson) – Manx Language and Literature (Robert L. Thomson) – The Welsh Language, Its History and Structure (David Thorne) – The Welsh Language (Glanville Price) – Welsh Literature (David R. Johnston) – The Breton Language (Humphrey Ll. Humphreys) – Breton Literature (Rita Williams) – Cornish Language and Literature (Glanville Price) – The Celtic Connection Today (Glanville Price). With a Foreword, 'Brittany and Myself', by Prince Louis de Polignac.
The Princess Grace Irish Library 6
More info →The Light Fantastic
ISBN: 978-0-86140-203-8
In this sequel to the much-acclaimed The Colour of Magic, Rincewind, Twoflower and the many-legged luggage return to the Discworld with the help of the Octavo and overcome the attempts by the wizards of the Unseen University to capture them, and then save the Discworld from an invasion from the Dungeon Dimensions.
`Marvellous sequel... pure fantastic delight.' - Time Out
More info →The First Discworld Novels
The Colour of Magic & The Light Fantastic
This is how the Discworld began...
In The Colour of Magic the failed wizard Rincewind burst upon the world and hasn't stopped running since. This was the book that started the phenomenally successful fantasy series. Here is the sapient pearwood Luggage, a mobile trunk which launders any clothes put in it and incidentally homicidally defends its owner. Here is Twoflower, an innocent tourist in a world of nightmares and fairy tales gone wrong. Here is Cohen the Barbarian, the world's oldest and greatest hero. Here is Death, not such a bad sort when you get to know him...
They have adventures. It'd take to long too explain. Just read it!
First published in 1983, The Colour of Magic has been translated into thirty languages, and has sold over two million copies in Corgi editions alone. The Light Fantastic, published in 1986, follows closely behind, and of all the Discworld novels it is the only true sequel to an earlier work. This two-in-one volume was first published in 1999.
More info →The Colour of Magic
ISBN: 978-0-86140-324-0
The first novel of the Discworld series
On a world supported on the back of a giant turtle (sex unknown), a wickedly eccentric expedition sets out. There’s Rincewind, an avaricious but inept wizard, Twoflower, a naive tourist whose murderous luggage moves on hundreds of little legs, dragons who only exist if you believe in them, and of course, the Edge of the Discworld, and its circumfence. . .
‘Pratchett is very good indeed’ - Standard
More info →



















