21.6 x 13.8 cm.           pbk edition of Irish Literary Studies Series (ISSN 0140-895X) volume 28

Perhaps nothing is more fascinating to the student of literature than an insight into a writer's creative process, a study of how the published works, from All That Fall to Footfalls, came to be as they are.

Theatre of Shadows both defines and takes as its subject the middle period of Samuel Beckett's dramatic writing. By making a close study of the structure, and of the largely unpublished manus-cript drafts, of the plays written from 1956 to 1976, this book offers considerable insight into Beckett's creative process. A combination of rigorous patterning and a movement away from concrete expression (what Beckett himself called a 'vaguening' of the text) is seen to be his customary working method during this period. Dr Pountney goes on to discuss how the plays work in the theatre, through a detailed analysis of Beckett's stagecraft.

In order to set the middle period in context some discussion of Beckett's early work for the theatre is included, and a final chapter on the late plays shows his dramatic imagination still finding new channels to explore. The book provides the student with as comprehensive an approach as possible to two decades of Beckett's drama. This is a paperback edition of the original 1988 publication.

Rosemary Pountney, whose first training was in theatre, performed the Irish premières of Not I (Mouth) and Footfalls (May) at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1978. She combines her Lectureship in English at Jesus College, Oxford, with touring (most recently in Eastern Europe and New Zealand), lecturing on Beckett's work in the theatre, and performing Rockaby and other one-woman plays.

'a marvellous contribution to Beckett criticism....  painstakingly scholarly, meticulous in its observations, and illuminating in its detail' Review of English Studies, 1990

'If you want the best book on the background to Beckett's plays (without jargon) this is it. It is also the most useful for the actor.' Barry McGovern

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and BERNARD SHAW AND THE COMEDY OF APPROVAL

ISBN: 978-0-86140-329-5

21.0 x 14.8 cm.  48 pp.  1991    Princess Grace Irish Library Lectures Series (ISSN 0950-5121) volume 7

Edited by Mgr John Hanly

ISBN: 978-0-85105-344-8

27.2 x 18.0 cm.
The illustrated end-papers reproduce a map of Rome published in 1676.
Note that our copies do not have a dust-jacket, only a clear protective cover. We took over a quantity of book blocks from the liquidators of  Dolmen Press in 1987, which we then had cloth-bound. We were unable to find any jackets.

In March 1670 St. Oliver Plun­kett, his long exile over, stepped ashore at Ringsend to the wel­come of friends and relatives. For twenty-two years he had lived in Rome as clerical student and pro­fessor of theology. It was an ex­citing if also a sad time. Oliver Plunkett stepped into Restoration Ireland as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate. For ten years, until his arrest in December 1679, he applied himself to the task of rebuilding and repairing, knowing that the storm was by no means over. In the early years he was a man in a hurry, taking full advan­tage of a period of relative toler­ation and peace. In 1674 he was for many months a fugitive, deter­mined not to forsake his flock until ‘they drag us to the ship with the rope around our necks’. The last few years of his life, including eighteen months in prison, were the years of the infamous Popish Plot of Titus Oates, of which he was the final victim, the last of the martyrs of Tyburn.

For the first time a complete chronological edition of Saint Oliver’s letters enables us to follow the story, as it evolves in his own words, of his work as Archbishop in Ulster, where the Plantation was barely two generations old. He emerges as a man of immense courage, deep conviction and priestly zeal with the sometimes all too human side of one who grew into sainthood; and in the final documents the magnificent calm with which he faced his cruel death stands out.

The Letters of Saint Oliver Plunkett give many interesting insights into various events and characters of his time. His pen ran freely, his policy was to be well informed, and to give a clear picture of all matters touching the Church in Ireland. There are many light-hearted passages too, as when he tells us that the farmer in whose barn he was hiding, and on whom he depended for his food, sometimes came back a little too merry from town, and his guest had to fast. . . .

The letters are printed in their original language, almost always Italian, with translation and com­mentary. The book is edited by Monsignor John Hanly who first worked on these letters for a doc­toral thesis at the Gregorian Uni­versity from 1959 to 1961, and who was Postulator of the Cause of Saint Oliver from 1968 until the canonisation in 1975.

Designed by Liam Miller.

ISBN: 978-0-86140-264-9

21.0 x 14.8 cm.       31 pp.      1986    Princess Grace Irish Library Lectures Series (ISSN 0950-5121) volume 3

In the first of the Princess Grace Irish Library Lectures, Professor A.Norman Jeffares began his consideration of the Parameters of Irish Literature in English by referring to 'the first great Irish writer in English . . . Jonathan Swift, the Dean of St. Patrick's, master of irony, and of the saeva indignatio, the fierce anger that inspired his satires'. In this, the third lecture, Professor Charles Peake turns to a very different aspect of Swift's mastery of irony – his development and refinement of what he called 'raillery' or 'irony . . . on the subject of praise'. Professor Peake shows how raillery suited both Swift's temperament and the characteristic bent of his genius, and examines some of the methods and techniques, ranging from the comparatively simple to the elaborately complex, by which Swift praised and honoured while avoiding fulsome eulogy.

Appended to the lecture are 'Notes on Irish Writers associated with Swift' which supply brief information, not only about figures of such distinction as Congreve and Thomas Parnell, but also about a number of minor writers, many of them undeservedly neglected, who were associated with the first great emergence of 'Irish Literature in English'.

21.6 x 13.8 cm    illus.   Ulster Editions & Monographs Series (ISSN 0954-3392) volume 10

Nuala Ní Dhomhnail included Michael Longley’s ‘Ceasefire’ in her choice of ten representative poems of the 1990s in Irish poetry in the following terms: ‘it made its first electrifying appearance in print in The Irish Times to coincide with the announcement by the IRA of the first Northern Ireland ceasefire. . . its effect was dynamic, and rippled right through the community, both North and South, having a galvanising effect that can only be imagined of some lines of Yeats, perhaps, at the turn of the century’.

This underlines both Longley’s stature and his humane response to the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’; and the Homeric base of ‘Ceasefire’ exemplifies his distinctive ability to find trans-cultural perspectives on localised issues. A creative tension between the general and particular is the hall-mark of his work as love poet, nature poet, and poet of conflict; and the spare, concentrated focus of his lyric practice is at the heart of his ability to image the macrocosm in the microcosm.

His status as a poet resident in Belfast throughout the ‘Troubles’ has been of talismanic importance over the last three decades. Just as significantly for his open outlook, his ‘home from home’ in Carrigskeewaun in the West of Ireland has been the inspiration for a rich and luminous body of lyric poetry where what he sees as his basic themes of love and death are broached via a naturalist’s intimate involvement with the elemental processes of the physical world.

In his latest volume, The Weather in Japan, winner of the 2000 Hawthornden Prize for ‘best work of imaginative literature’, Italy and Japan further extend the geographical and cultural co-ordinates within which his poetry finds its moral and aesthetic realisation. This new collection continues the remarkable resurgence in Longley’s career during the 1990s, marked by the lyric intensities of Gorse Fires (1991) and the more unruly lyric energy of The Ghost Orchid (1995). These volumes consolidate Longley’s position at the forefront of contemporary Irish poetry.

The present volume, the first book devoted entirely to Longley’s work, brings together a number of experts on Longley and Irish poetry in general – Michael Allen, Terence Brown, Neil Corcoran, Douglas Dunn, Elmer Kennedy-Andrews, Peter McDonald, Alan Peacock and Robert Welch. Through a variety of thematic, contextual and technical approaches it examines the whole of his career up to and including The Weather in Japan.

The majority of the essays were given as papers at the 1996 session of the Ulster Symposium at the University of Ulster, Coleraine.

Kathleen Devine lectured in English at the University of Ulster at Coleraine, where Alan Peacock also lectured in Classics and English.

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21.6 x 13.8 cm.    xx, 267 pp.   1883    Ulster Editions and Monoographs Series (ISSN 0954-3392) volume 4

The reception of Brian Friel's recent Dancing at Lughnasa confirmed his status as Ireland's leading dramatist. The body of work that he produced is outstanding in its breadth of sympathy and interest, its dramaturgical invention and its wide cultural and intellectual purview. At one level, it may be seen as a continuous examination of Irish culture and politics, committed and analytical, but not sectionally propagandist.

His outlook in his drama, however, was not amenable to simplistic categorization, political or otherwise. As this volume demonstrates, linguistically, allusively, and in terms of its broad transcultural analogising, he work ranges widely. He utilised ideas and terminologies drawn from various cultural sources and academic disciplines in a way that exemplified his central, insistent concern with the phenomenon of language and its implications.
As an Irish dramatist, however, he made Irish social, political and, notably, family life his focus and built upon a recognised tradition of twentieth century Irish play-writing.

This book addresses the variety and complexity of Friel's drama by bringing to bear a range of academic and other professional and creative approaches in order to highlight particular aspects of his work and thought. Hence, contributors include a playwright, poet, theatre-producer, historian and various specialists in relevant literatures. In this way, the book suggests the intellectual richness, humanity, and protean skill and invention of the work.
Among the contributors are John Cronin, Neil Corcoran, Desmond Maxwell, Christopher Murray, Thomas Kilroy, Seamus Deane, Robert Welch, Sean Connolly, Joe Dowling, Terence Brown, Fintan O'Toole and Seamus Heaney.

Edited by Gerald Monsman

ISBN: 978-0-944318-09-6

22.6 x 14.8 cm     384 pp.             1995

This is the most complete edition ever published of Pater's last work. Although a version was published in 1896, two years after his death, Charles L.Shadwell, its editor, omitted six chapters that existed in manuscript.

Scarcely two years after Walter Pater's death, Macmillan & Company published Gaston de Latour: An Unfinished Romance. The author of works critical to the formation of the Transition and Modernist periods set his last novel in the turbulent years following the Reformation. Selected chapters first appeared serially in Macmillan's Magazine and the Fortnightly Review, but the posthumous volume edited by Charles L. Shadwell, Pater's long-time friend, remains controversial. For a century readers have seen only a portion of what Pater wrote for Gaston de Latour. Shadwell withheld six manuscript chapters.

Pater's prominence and widening influence in late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century studies makes those missing chapters more intriguing than ever. ELT Press is pleased to publish this long-awaited new edition Gaston de Latour: The Revised Text.

Edited from the holographs and based on definitive material incorporating all known fragments, The Revised Text includes the crucial suppressed chapters. Professor Gerald Monsman's edition, meticulously edited and researched, is far more revelatory of Pater's intimate thoughts than the book Macmillan printed in 1896.

The Revised Text is notable in other ways. Pater's study of eroticism in his portrait of Queen Marguerite is a significant contribution to gender studies in the late-Victorian period. Through the imaginary portrait of Gaston and Gaston's contemporaries (Ronsard, Montaigne, Bruno, King Henry III) Pater's fictional fantasia perceptively confronts and admonishes the Yellow Nineties, Oscar Wilde not least. As Monsman says, the Pater of the 1890s, pondering the issues of art and morality, eroticism and guilt, "is in may ways the most interesting of all the successive Paters – certainly wearier, but also more candid, consummately polished artistically, self-consciously aware of a dawning modernism."

Gerald Monsman is a Professor of English at the University of Arizona and former Head of the Department. He has worked for nearly a decade to bring this authoritative edition to print. His contributions to the field are well known. Among other publications, he has written three books on Pater: Pater's Portraits (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), Walter Pater (G. K. Hall, 1977), Walter Pater's Art of Autobiography (Yale University Press, 1980).

Gaston de Latour: The Revised Text is a significant achievement. Scholars and students will find Monsman's Introduction, Explanatory Notes, Diplomatic Transcriptions, Emendations and Variants invaluable.

ISBN: 978-0-85105-364-6

21.6 x 13.8 cm.

with 38 illustrations.

The primary purpose of this anthology is to demonstrate the nature and quality of the Irish poetic tradition during the troubled centuries from the collapse of the Gaelic order to the emergence of English as the dominant vernacular of the Irish people. The English translations, all new, have aimed at a close fidelity to the content of the originals while suggesting something of the poetic quality and the basic rhythms of the original Irish poems

21.6 x 13.8 cm.  

The tradition of carol singing in County Wexford goes back to the seventeenth century and continues as a living tradition today in the parish of Kilmore. The repertoire derives from a little book of songs published by Luke Wadding in Ghent in 1684 and from a manuscript collection compiled by Father William Devereux in County Wexford in 1734, which has been copied several times and is still circulated in manuscript copies.

Diarmaid O Muirithe has assembled the twenty-one carols which exist in the Wadding book and later copies of the Devereux manuscript compiled by Michael Murphy and Richard Neil in the early nineteenth century, and here presents the first complete collection of these rare texts.

The traditional airs which are still sung today were recorded by the Kilmore singers, and from this recording Seoirse Bodley has transcribed the airs. He has also provided a commentary on the musical mode. 

Diarmaid O Muirithe is an authority on the Anglo-Norman culture of south-east Ireland and Seoirse Bodley is a composer of international repute.

The reproduction on the cover is a detail from a woodcut, ‘The Holy Family with two angels in a portico’ c. 1502, by Albrecht Dürer.

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ISBN: 978-0-901072-52-8
12.6 x 13.8 cm.      iv, 395 pp.   1977   Volume 1 of the Dramatic Works of Denis Johnston

Containing: General Introduction,  The Old Lady Says `No!' and 'A Note on what happened', The Scythe and the Sunset, Storm Song, The Dreaming Dust, 'Strange Occurrence on Ireland's Eye' and accompanying prose writings about these plays.

Written in about AD800, Navigato Sancti Brendani Abbatis is one of the most famous and enduring stories of western Christendom. While the question whether Saint Brendan reached America remains a subject of controversy, the tale itself is of great interest – a strongly integrated text which derives from several centuries of Irish literary tradition. The text is illustrated by the relevant woodcuts from a German version of the tale which was printed in Augsburg in 1476.

John J. O’Meara has here translated one of the most famous and enduring stories of western Christendom, the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, written in Ireland perhaps as early as the year 800. While the routes of Saint Brendan’s journeys remain a subject of controversy, the tale itself is of great interest – a strongly integrated text which derives from several centuries of Irish literary tradition.

The Voyage of Saint Brendan presents Professor O’Meara’s translation of the only scientific edition of the original Latin text, with his introduction, and is illustrated by the relevant woodcuts from a German version of the tale, Sankt Brandans Seefahrt,  printed in Augsburg in 1476. When this version was published By the Dolmen Press in 1975 it was acclaimed by critics on both sides of the Atlantic:

‘It’s a fascinating book’ (Quidnunc, The Irish Times); ‘has the  simplicity, the joyous naiveté, the suspension of reality which captivate the most sceptical reader of the Franciscan Fioretti and the same pervasive innocence  and fiery spirituality’ (The Irish Independent); ‘valuable both as scholarship and literature’ (The Malahat Review); ‘A worthwhile book in every respect‘ (Choice, U.S.A.).

It was designed by Liam Miller.

ISBN: 978-0-86140-368-4

29.6 x 21.0 cm.   91 pp.  with 115 illus.

Limerick is probably the most famous of all Irish laces. When President Kennedy came to Limerick in 1963 the Lord Mayor presented him with a Christening robe of the lace, and other important visitors have been delighted to receive gifts of this prestigious material.

The making of this form of lace became possible when machine-made net became readily available, as it is a form of embroidery on net, being either chain-stitch (tambour) or darned net (also called run-lace), or a combination of both techniques.

This volume is produced in the same format as Carrickmacross Lace and Mountmellick Work, and is in three sections. The first deals with the invention of Limerick lace and its history, the second with Mrs Florence Vere O'Brien and her contribution to Limerick and its lace-workers, while the third deals with the techniques used in making Limerick Lace, the materials and designs, preparation and sewing, and filling and embroidery stitches.

The book contains many illustrations of fine piece of lacework from the authors' collections, as well as pictures of prizewinning examples from photos in the possession of the Royal Dublin Society.

About the authors

Nellie O Cléirigh was born in Clonmel, County Tipperary, and is a graduate of University College Dublin, in History and Irish, but she also attended embroidery classes at the Dublin School of Art. She formed a collection of old Irish lace which has been exhibited in Ireland and abroad, and this led to her study of the history of lace making in Ireland and of the people who contributed to it development. Publication of her Carrickmacross Lace in 1985 has led to lectures, publications and broadcasts in Ireland and abroad.  She worked as a civil servant in Dublin until her marriage to Cormac, when she established a handicraft business in Dublin, and later a craft shop in Knightstown, Valentia Island, Co.Kerry. Her Valentia, A Different Irish Island was published in 1992.

Veronica Rowe (née Hardy) grew up at Walterstown, Crusheen, Co. Clare, not far from the home of her maternal grandmother, Florence Vere O'Brien (whose work for the Limerick lace industry is told in Section Two of this book). She trained as a textile designer in Scotland and worked with several handweaving firms in Ireland. She gained an Arts Council scholarship to France and Italy, and a Diploma in the History of European Painting. She is a past chairman of the Irish Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers, and was its representative on the Crafts Council of Ireland. She is a member of the Arts Committee of the Royal Dublin Society, of its Crafts Sub-committee, and of the committee that in 1988 organised an important lace exhibition in Dublin (later displayed in Lisburn Museum, Co.Down), at which her collection of Florence Vere O'Brien's lace was shown. She organised an exhibition of Clare Embroidery in County Clare and County Down, and has written articles and a booklet on the subject.

29.5 x 21.0 cm.     64 pp.    with 84 illus, incl. 32 patterns   1985 (Dolmen Press)  1990 by Colin Smythe Ltd

Carrickmacross lace was originally inspired by some Italian appliqué‚ lace which Mrs Grey Porter, wife of the Rector of Donaghmoyne, a small village northeast of Carrickmacross in County Monaghan, brought back from her continental honeymoon in 1816. Her interest in this lace led to an  exploration of the craft with her sewing maid, and by the following decade she had evolved an individual style and established a cottage industry in her home parish, training young women as lacemakers. These in turn spread the craft to other areas in the northern counties of Ireland. In the 1840s a school of lacemakers was established to create gainful work for women after the Great Famine, but overproduction and economic depression led to a decline in the lace industry. The survival of Carrickmacross lace into the twentieth century is due to the nuns of the St Louis order who established a convent in the town and set up a lace-making class in 1897, which still continues the tradition.

There are two varieties of Carrickmacross lace - appliqué, where fine cotton is applied to a machine net base, the design outlined with a thick thread and the unworked cotton outside the area of the design motif cut away, and guipure, in which there is no net base and the outlined design motifs are joined by `bars' or `brides' worked out in needlepoint stitches. Both varieties of work are sometimes found together in more elaborate examples of this beautiful and distinctive lace. In Carrickmacross Lace, Mrs Ó Cleirigh tells the story behind the craft and outlines its historical development. Fine examples of the work are illustrated and the book also has a practical section which explains the stitches and procedures used in the craft. There is also a selection of full-size patterns drawn from historic examples in Irish collections.

Nellie Ó Cleirigh was born in Clonmel, County Tipperary. At the Ursuline convent school in Waterford she was encouraged to further her artistic studies. Embroidery classes at the Dublin School of Art were part of her training. She worked as a civil servant in Dublin until her marriage, when she established a handicraft business which she still continues. She also formed a collection of old Irish lace which has been exhibited several times in and outside Ireland, and which led to her study of the history of lace-making in Ireland and of the people who contributed to its development. Carrickmacross Lace is her first book and was originally published by the Dolmen Press in 1985.

19.0 x 15.5 cm.    

Women of Ireland, the first comprehensive biographic dictionary of its kind, documents the rich and varied contributions woomen have made to the shaping of Irish history and culture. The book includes biographies of Irish women from earliest times up to the present, many of them ignored by historians until now. With its wealth of information, its accessible style and the attractive selection of illustrations, this reference work will serve general readers as well as students, particuarly those interested in history and women's studies.

ISBN: 978-0-86140-045-4
22.9 x 14.5 cm.      xvi, 91 pp.  1979

The Harvest Festival is Sean O’Casey’s earliest extant play. Written in about 1918 or 1919, it was the second play that O’Casey offered the Abbey Theatre. It was turned down, but he kept the manu­script and it now forms part of the extensive O’Casey archive in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. It has never been performed, and this is its first pub­lication in the U.K. and Ireland, following on its U.S. publication by only a few months.

The plot focuses on the turmoil of an outside world of strikes and riots converging on a Dublin city church in the midst of its preparations for a harvest festival. Set in 1913, it deals with Irish workers’ battles against economic oppression and religious hypocrisy, with that vital combina­tion of passion, humour and pathos that distinguishes O’Casey’s later plays. It is a rich melodrama of class struggle, with ironically pointed clashes involving representatives of Church, Employers and Labour.

An incomplete revision of the first act, which O’Casey kept with the original manuscript, is included as an Appendix to show the direction the playwright might have gone had he chosen to revise the entire play: as it is, students of drama will see in The Harvest Festival the seeds of O’Casey’s later works, and the lineal descendants of its characters appear in Red Roses for Me, The Drums of Father Ned, and The Bishop’s Bonfire.

Eileen O’Casey has contributed a foreword entitled ‘Clench Your Teeth’, and John O’Riordan has written an Introduction.

A three-quarter leather edition with wood veneer panels, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt, intended to be limited to 50 copies, ISBN 0-86140-052-6, signed by the writers of the Foreword and Introduction, Eileen O'Casey and John O'Riordan, was also published, but of the 50 copies only 30 were actually bound.

Edited, with an introduction and Notes, by David Krause

ISBN: 978-0-86140-342-4

21.6 x 13.8 cm.        xxiv, 119 pp.     1991            Irish Dramatic Texts 5

Regarded by O'Casey as his best play, this dark comedy about Irish rural life at mid-century symbolises the struggle between repression and liberty. Although the final victory is to the forces of oppression (in the shape of Father Domineer and his gombeen men) the play is highly amusing. Initially it was regarded as anti-Catholic and suppressed in Ireland and New York. This publication is the only definitive edition available, having been compared with the original manuscript (in the New York Public Library). Professor Krause is the official biographer of O'Casey.

Co-published with the Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C.

ISBN: 978-0-86140-440-7
22.5 x 15.0 cm      vi, 257 pp.     2001

The Second of The Borough Novels

What does it feel like to be turned into a saint? Well, a lot of fuss and bother, probably. So the corpse of the ancient Gardener, cooling on a slab in The Borough's secret Abbey, isn't waiting to find out. It's happy being dead. All it wants is peace. That and to be far beyond the reach of its Abbot's unholy ambitions.

And then there's the microchip that knows everything there is to know. But it's lost and cold and dying in the winter's ice and snow. The last of its transistors begins to flicker out. Is there anything at all that can save it now?

Planting Out is the second of the Books of The Borough by Gerry O’Brien. The soap saga continues, open and read...

Soldier, sailor, dolls' house maker, Gerry O'Brien has been them all though not necessarily in that order, it's just the way it scans best. And that in itself should tell you all you need to know about him, and maybe more than you want. (That and the fact that, arguably, he begins too many sentences with conjunctions.)

But of course there have been other things too – lorry driving, stacking shelves, bread delivery, scrapes with death. Though that was all years and years ago. Now he's been a full-time writer for longer than anything else except a husband, a father and alive. And his two children are lovely a lot of the time. And he is married to an extraordinarily patient woman who is also lovely more on than off.

e was educated, yes.

Getting The Books of The Borough off the ground is nearly the most exciting thing that's ever happened to him. And if that sounds unlikely then try getting your own books published and you'll see.

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ISBN: 978-0-86140-416-2
17.9 x 11.2 cm.    The first of The Borough Novels

The Diamond is a psychopath. It wants to rule the world and it’s not messing about. It’s a Diamond that means business. And there’s only one man who can stop it.

Just one man? But surely. . . There has to be. . .

Dream on.

Down in London’s infamous Borough the denizens are rushing to grab the Diamond first – before someone else does.

Can the Diamond be stopped? Can decency overcome greed? Will the fabric of Time, space and hospital corridors ever be the same again?
Enquire within.

'O'Brien's debut is a fresh, fast-paced tale ... and takes us smartly through the intricate consequences of what occurs when a desirable diamond ends up in the hands of the wrong people. It's packed full of motors, shooters, East End vernacular and plenty of old-fashioned London villains, who are prone to a comic cock-up or two. Sounds good? Now, imagine that a writer influenced by Terry Pratchett has decided to spice it up with a bit of fantasy, alternative reality and anthropomorphism. Yes, anthropomorphism. The diamond can think and converse with other inanimate objects and is, in fact, probably the most fully realised character in the novel - we even see the robbery from its perspective. If this sounds like a mess, it's not, as long as you can get along with a thinking, talking gemstone for a hero, the rest of the story pulls you in with its vigour and humour. Although clever-clever, Cleaning Up is intelligent as well, and you'll have a good time with it.' The Mail on Sunday's Night and Day

'Has a warm and ingenious inanity that recalls the writing of Terry Pratchett: to coin a nasty new verb, we could say it Pratchetts away merrily. Be encouraged or warned, according to taste.' Sunday Times

Foreword by Martin Ebon

22.8 x 15.5 cm.       xviii, 186 pp.

This book is a challenge to everyone who grants the possiblity of survival of consciousness after physical death.

‘Dr Naegeli provides a scholarly contribution to a better understanding of a complex and disturbing phenomenon. With increasing reports of cases of possession, this book offers a very helpful focus by a highly respected psychiatrist.’ Lee Pulos, PhD, clinical psychologist.

‘this book reveals the courage of a man who unapologetically accepts the reality of possession – a largely unpopular view – and the perspicacity of a thinker who has puzzled through the implications of this phenomenon and the relationship between possession and mental illness. A major step in the attempt to grapple with a most baffling condition.’   Adam Crabtree, psychotherapist and author of Multiple Man: Possession and Multiple Personality.

‘demonic possession has been part of culture throughout human history. Since some form of life after death – the existence of a soul – is widely accepted, the possibility of discarnate evil also exists. After all, the soul of a criminal does not suddenly become saintly at death.’  C.Normal Shealy, MP PhD. First President of the American Holistic Medical Association, physician, author and lecturer

‘a breakthrough in mental health concepts, a must for those in the helaing arts.’ Dr Edith Fiore, clinical psychologist and author of The Unquiet Dead.

‘An in-depth overview of possession and exorcism by a practising psychiatrist [who] deals with rare and not-so-rare phenomena all too often ignored by the establishment but which will not go away. His reports beg for a fresh look, re-examination and innovative experimentation, challenging both the practical-minded and the theoretician.’   Berthold Eric Schwarz MD, psychiatrist and author of The Psychic Nexus.

CONTENTS

Foreword by Martin Ebon

Preface by Walter and Mary Jo Uphoff

1. Introduction
2. Present Day Views of Possession
   The Author’s View of Possession; The “Creed” of Rationalism; The Importance of Experience
3. Natural Philosophy and Natural Science
4. Good and Evil
5. The Demonic (Evil)
   The Demonic as Qualitative Reality; The Demonic in the Ancient World View; The Ethereal Embodiment of Demons; The Demonic in Theology; Western Man’s View of the Demonic; Manifestations of the Demonic; Need for Expanded lliinking; Religious Aspect of the Human Soul
6. Possession
   General Observations Concerning Possession; Forms of Possession; Causes of Possession; Psychic Prerequisites; Nature of Possession; Characteristics of Possession
7. Positive Possession
8. The Exorcism
   Major Exorcism; Minor Exorcism; Exorcism Within the Protestant Church
9. Types of Exorcism
   By Martin Luther; In the Christian Philippines; Baptismal Exorcism; Non-Christian Exorcism
10. Medical Exorcism
    In Brazil; The Author’s Method; Dr. Carl Wickland’s Method; Observations by Wilson Van Dusen, Ph.D.
11. The Case History of Gottliebin Dittus
    The Course of Events; Pastor Blumhardt’s Personal Opinions Compared With Contemporary Viewpoints in Parapsychology; The Case History of Gottliebin Dittus from the Viewpoint of Modem Psychiatry
12. Other Cases of Possession
    The Possession of Mrs. P. 1952; The Possessed M.M.; The Possessed Mrs. C.
13. Unusual Cases of Possession
    The Lads of Illfurt; Jeanne Ferry; A Possessed Girl in Lowenberg; The Nut-Eating Bewitched Woman; Several Possessed Boys; The Possessed Youth; About a Possessed Girl; The Possessed Nuns in the Convent of Kentorff; The Possessed Servant; Agnes Katherina Schleicher; Germana Cele; The Possessed Cat
14. Cults and Charismatics
    Cultic Possession; Similarities Between Charismatics and the Possessed
15. Anneliese Michel
    A Case that Went to Court; Expiatory Suffering
16. Harassment and Multiple Personality
    Multiple Personality Disorder; Harassment Differs from Possession; Treatment of a Non-Schizophrenic Patient Suffering from Harassment
17. The Electronic Voice Phenomenon
    The Potential Risk of Intense Preoccupation with Paranormal Taped Voices; The “Spiricom” Experiments
18. Infestation: The Mildest Form of Possession
    Mrs. L. in B.; Events Surrounding Mrs. F.; Mrs. M.G.; Miss H. N.; Mr. R.; Miss O.
19. Witchcraft and Possession
20. Summary and Conclusions
    Bibliography
    Index

Chosen and Introduced by Richard Allen Cave

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

Hardback ISBN: 0-86140-142-5 / 978-0-86140-142-0 £30.00
Paperback ISBN: 0-86140-143-3 / 978-0-86140-143-7 £ 10.95

21.6 x 13.8 cm.

Contains: Sovereign Love, Birthright, Maurice Harte, The Briery Gap, Autumn Fire, The Pipe in the Fields, the essay ‘George Shiels, Brinsley MacNamara, Etc.’, and the previously unpublished Illumination , bibliographical checklist.

The playwriting career of Thomas Cornelius Murray (1873-1959) started in 1909 with the production of his first play, Wheel of Fortune (which he revised in 1913 and renamed Sovereign Love), at the Cork Little Theatre, but it was his Birthright, produced at the Abbey Theatre in the following year that established him as a writer of stark and tragic realism. His most enduring plays were all written during the next two decades, but none of the plays written after 1930 can be compared for quality with his earlier work.

The present selection contains Sovereign Love (1909, revised 1913), Birthright (1911), Maurice Harte (1912), The Briery Gap (1917), Autumn Fire (1925), and The Pipe in the Fields (1927), together with Appendices containing Murray's essay 'George Shiels, Brinsley MacNamara, Etc.' (1939), which not only discusses these authors' work but sheds considerable light on his own views about playwriting, and Illumination (1939) which despite its evident weaknesses is still the best of his later dramas. There is a bibliographical checklist of his writings.