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

More info →

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'.

More info →

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.

More info →

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.

More info →

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.

 

More info →

21.6 x 13.8 cm.     viii, 291 pp.  2006    
   Ulster Editions & Monographs Series (ISSN 0954-3392) volume 14

Ever since his student efforts thrilled Seamus Heaney in the early 1970s, Paul Muldoon has written poetry acclaimed for its brilliance and originality, its mischievousness, wit and complex artifice. Today, Muldoon is widely considered to be the greatest poet of his generation, not just in Ireland, but throughout the English-speaking world.

The twelve essays collected here chart the development of this unpredictable, innovative and challenging talent over the last thirty years. They offer a kaleidoscopic examination of Muldoon’s writings in the three genres of poetry, prose and drama, from a variety of perspectives, and without any polemical intention beyond that of celebrating his achievement.

Taken together, these essays attempt to map the continuity of Muldoon’s diverse and substantial oeuvre, but also to highlight its constant experimentalism; they demonstrate how difficult it is for us to know how seriously we should take anything Muldoon says, but alert us to the ways in which the playfulness and cleverness contribute to a profound ethical seriousness; they explore his complexly deconstructive technique to show how it represents a constant renewal of the self and of form; they show how the momentum for escape from the past is always contained within the recognition of the impossibility of escape; they examine the work as a means of both evasive self-protection from the world and self-expression of an intense emotional life; they calculate the ratios of scepticism and passion, unknowing and knowingness, which give the work its uniquely compelling power; they orientate the reader towards the Muldoonian home as always being located where it is not; they help us to see the way the writing folds back or feeds upon itself, and upon others’ writings, yet yearns for freedom and transcendence. They are confirmation of the validity of Heaney’s comment of nearly thirty years ago, when he said that Muldoon was the kind of writer who doesn’t offer us answers, but keep us alive in the middle of the question.

The contributors are (in order of the essays) Peter Denman, Richard York, Kathleen McCracken, Tim Kendall, Tim Hancock, Elmer Kennedy-Andrews, Stan Smith, Ivan Phillips, Clair Wills, Heather O’Donoghue, Guinn Batten, and Jerzy Jarniewicz. A number of these essays were originally delivered as lectures at the fifth Ulster Symposium at the University of Ulster at Coleraine in 2000. Also included is a transcript of the symposium interview that Neil Corcoran conducted with the poet.

Elmer Kennedy-Andrews is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Ulster at Coleraine. His books include The Poetry of Seamus Heaney: All the Realms of Whisper (1988); (editor) Seamus Heaney: A Collection of Critical Essays (1992); (editor) Contemporary Irish Poetry: A Collection of Critical Essays (1992); The Art of Brian Friel: Neither Dreams nor Reality (1995); The Poetry of Seamus Heaney; Icon Critical Guides (1998), (editor) Irish Fiction Since 1960 (2004),  Fiction and the Northern Ireland Troubles: (De-) Constructing the North (2003), and Writing Home: Poetry and Place in Northern Ireland 1968-2008 (2009).

More info →

21.4 x 13.6 cm.      xiv, 248 pp.   1993   Irish Literary Studies Series (ISSN 0140-895X) volume 45

A Small Nation’s Contribution to the World contains a selection from the papers given at the 1989 conference of the International Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature, with Professor Robert Welch as Chairman. The conference, the first ever held in Eastern-Central Europe, convened in Debrecen, Hungary, chaired by Professor Istvan Palffy. This selection is broadly representative of the truly international nature of the conference – whose delegates came from every continent – and of the study of Irish literature today. It includes essays on Beckett, Joyce, Friel, Yeats, O'Casey, Parker, Clarke, Kinsella, Muldoon, Mahon, Banville, Brian Moore, Edna O'Brien, Swift and Edgeworth as well as on critical issues, such as: the uses of the fantastic in prose and drama, modernism and romanticism, Irish semiotics, social criticism in contemporary Irish poetry and. especially appropriate for the occasion, the relationship and influence of Hungary and Ireland on one another's literature.

Contributors to this volume are Csilla Ber­tha, Eoin Bourke, Patrick Burke, Martin J. Croghan, Ruth Fleischmann, Maurice Har­mon, Werner Huber. Thomas Kabdebo, Ve­ronika Kniezsa, Mária Kurdi, Donald E. Morse, Ruth Neil, István Rácz, Marius Byron Raizis, Aladár Sarbu, Bernice Schrank, Jo­seph Swann and András Ungar.

More info →

Chosen and Introduced by David B. Eakin and Michael Case

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

Hardcover ISBN:0-86140-144-1 / 978-0-86140-144-4 £35.00
Paperback ISBN: 0-86140-145-X / 978-0-86140-145-1 £9.95

21.6 x 13.8  cm.

Contains:  George Moore's The Strike at Arlingford, The Bending of the Bough, The Coming of Gabrielle, The Passing of the Essenes; and Edward Martyn's The Heather Field, Maeve, The Tale of a Town, bibliographical checklist.

GEORGE MOORE is best known as a master of English prose, but he also wrote plays, usually in collaboration with other authors, and occasionally based on or on the precursors of his own novels, the best known of which are probably Diarmuid and Grania (with W.B.Yeats), The Strike at Arlingford, and The Bending of the Bough (based on Edward Martyn's The Tale of a Town). Apart from the last two, this selection also contains Moore's The Coming of Gabrielle and The Passing of the Essenes.

EDWARD MARTYN was, with W.B.Yeats and Lady Gregory, a founder of the Irish Literary Theatre, the second production of which, opening on 9 May 1899, the day after Yeats's The Countess Cathleen, was his The Heather Field. Apart from this play, the present volume also contains Maeve and The Tale of a Town.

As well as the introduction by David B. Eakin and Michael Case, there are also bibliographical checklists of Moore's and Martyn's works.

 

More info →

Chosen and Introduced by Robert O'Driscoll

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

Paperback ISBN; 0-86140-149-2 / 978-86140-149-9  10.50

21.6 x 13.8 cm.

Contains: The King of Friday's Men, The Paddy Pedlar, The Wood of the Whispering, Daughter from over the Water, Petticoat Loose and the previously unpublished The Bachelor's Daughter, bibliographical checklist.

Michael Joseph Molloy (1917-1994) was born and died in Milltown, Co. Galway. Originally intending to enter the priesthood, this was prevented by his being struck down by tuberculosis, and it was during the long periods he spent in hospital that he started writing plays, having been inspired by a childhood visit to the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. His first play, Old Road, was produced at the Abbey in 1943, as was The Visiting House in 1946, and The King of Friday’s Men in 1948. When the old theatre burned down and the company moved to the Queen’s Theatre his The Wood of the Whispering and The Paddy Pedlar were produced there in 1953, followed by The Will and the Way in 1955, The Right Rose Tree in 1958, and The Wooing of Duvesa in 1964.

After the company’s return to the rebuilt Theatre in 1966 his plays – with their romantic plots and Syngean dialogue – did not find favour with the new Abbey, and with the exception of Petticoat Loose in 1979, none of his later works were performed professionally.  By the late 1980s he had come to believe – as he wrote in one letter to the publisher of this selection – that the Abbey  no longer even read plays by authors based in the provinces until they had been produced elsewhere (here he cited himself and John B.Keane as examples), and that his works scared the ‘actor Artistic Directors who know nothing about provincial Ireland and nothing about the rules of playwriting’.  He feared his plays might be the last full-length folk plays written in Ireland.

Robert O'Driscoll, an authority on Samuel Ferguson and on the early works of W. B. Yeats, was Professor of English Literature at St Michael's College, University of Toronto, until his retirememt. He died in 1996.

 

More info →

Modernist scholars have written a handful of comparative studies on Peter and Joyce. This work is the first book-length exploration into the aesthetic development of these writers that underscores the importance of Pater's work in Joyce's works. Much of Pater's and Joyce's aesthetics evolves from the dialectical tension between the sensual and the spiritual. The Paterian-Joycean syntheses of basic antinomies - religion and sensuality, empiricism and idealism, Aristotelian mimesis and aestheticism - result in kindred theories of art.

Moliterno's highly readable account of the intellectual affinity between the two authors searches their relationship and Joyce's potential debt to Pater. In four main chapters Moliterno discusses the transition of Pater and Joyce from priests to artist and the parallel ways they portray this process in fiction: traces the Paterian elements of the aesthetics of Stephen Dedalus and of the mature Joyce; compares Pater's epiphanies with Joyce's to reveal how Pater helped shape the Joycean epiphany; and analyses the similar epistemologies behind the development of Pater's and Joyce's aesthetics.

To some they may seem an odd match. Joyce, who sought to mirror the everyday lives of Dubliners through revolutionary literary techniques, appears to have little in common in Pater, the precious "father of aestheticism", precursor of Wilde and other aesthete who detested the mimesis Joyce championed. As Moliterno's book reveals, Pater has more in common with Joyce in this regard than with the aesthetes of the fin de siècle.

The Dialectics of Sense and Spirit in Pater and Joyce carefully discriminates connections between one of the late nineteenth century's most influential writers and the early twentieth century's master novelist.

More info →

21.6 x 13.8 cm.    xiv, 263 pp. +  12pp. colour  and b/w illus. 
Ulster Editions & Monographs series (ISSN 0954-3392) volume 12

Frank McGuinness and His Theatre of Paradox is a critical study of one of the most important contemporary Irish dramatists. It offers an overview of the McGuinness’s drama from his early plays right up to the recent, Dolly West's Kitchen. The author has chosen to treat the plays thematically, rather than chronologically, which highlights the playwright's major preoccupations in the contexts of modern and contemporary Ireland. She positions McGuinness exactly as a representative of a dynamic creative intelligence fully alive to the various factors, undercurrents, issues, problems, and tensions that are being lived through in present-day Irish society, North and South.

Contents:

1. Folk Memory as Lethal Cultural Weapon: Protestant Ireland vs. Catholic Ireland (Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, and Carthaginians);
2. Visualising McGuinness’s Verbal Theatre: Interpretation of Caravaggio’s Theatricality (Innocence);
3. ‘An Unhappy Marriage between Ireland and England’: A Post-Colonial Gaze at Ireland’s Past (Mary and Lizzie, Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me, and Mutabilitie);
4. ‘The Voices of the Voiceless’: Representation of Irish Women (The Factory Girls, Baglady, and The Hen House);
5. Families at War: McGuinness’s Irish Bad Comedy of Manners (The Bird Sanctuary, and Dolly West’s Kitchen);
Catalogue of the Tilling Archive of McGuinness material in the the Library at the University of Ulster, Coleraine.

Hiroko Mikami is Professor of English at Waseda University, Tokyo. She was a visiting research fellow at the Centre for Irish Literature and Bibliography, University of Ulster and obtained her Ph.D. on Frank McGuinness from University of Ulster where some of his typescripts and secondary materials are located in the Tilling Archive. She has translated many contemporary Irish plays into Japanese: Tom Murphy's Bailegangaire, A Thief of Christmas; Brian Friel's Freedom of the City, Making History; Thomas Kilroy's Double Cross, and Frank McGuinness's Innocence and Mutabilitie.

More info →

Chosen and Introduced by Wolfgang Zach

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

Paperback ISBN: 0-86140-293-6 / 978-0-86140-293-9 £8.95

21.6 x 13.8 cm

Contains: The Turn of the Road, The Drone, Red Turf, The Troth, Phantoms, Bridgehead and Peter, bibliographical checklist.
Note. Although the two articles ‘The Ulster Literary Theatre’ and ‘Meet Rutherford Mayne’ were announced as being part of this volume they were, for reasons the publisher is unable to explain, omitted from the published book. They can now be read  HERE

Samuel John Waddell (1878-1967), who took on the stage-name Rutherford Mayne when he embarked on a theatrical career, was the most prolific, versatile, and successful playwright that the Irish Literary Revival in Ulster brought forth. In the course of his career as a dramatist, from 1906 to 1934, he wrote thirteen plays – ten plays for the Ulster Literary Theatre, one for the Dublin-based Theatre of Ireland, and two for the Abbey Theatre. Especially his early realistic Ulster 'peasant plays' were very successful, among them The Drone (1908), the most popular Irish folk comedy of the first half of the twentieth century. He also acted a great number of main parts in plays of his own and of other writers, to great acclaim, mainly in Belfast and Dublin but also on tours to England and Scotland, from 1904 onwards until late in his life. His plays disappeared from the stage in the 1950s and when he died at the age of 89, in 1967, his artistic achievements were almost forgotten.

In this selection of Rutherford Mayne's plays, seven of his eight published plays – his most important ones – have been included, The Turn of the Road, The Drone , The Troth, Red Turf, Phantoms, Peter and Bridge Head. Two important prose pieces (one of Mayne's essays and an interview), have been added to the plays as they provide direct insight into his personality, views, and career.

Wolfgang Zach’s introduction shows why the plays should be remembered today, providing a lengthy survey of Mayne's life and works, with particular emphasis on a discussion of all his plays, their critical reception, stage history, and specific features.

 

Wolfgang Zach was Professor of English (Chair) at the University of Innsbruck and Head of its English Department. Before his appointment to this present position in 1994/95, he taught at the University of Graz and also was a Visiting Professor at a great number of universities in each continent. From his Ph.D. thesis on Oliver Goldsmith (1969) onwards he has published widely in the field of Irish literature and was a Vice-President of IASIL (the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures). He hosted an IASIL-Conference and edited its proceedings (with H. Kosok) on Literary Interrelations. Ireland, England and the World, 3 vols. (Tubingen: Narr, 1987), his most recent volume (ed. with R. Freiburg and A. Löffler) is on Swift: The Enigmatic Dean (Tübingen:Stauffenburg, 1998), and for many years he has been active as European Continental Editor of the Irish Literary Supplement.

 

More info →

21.6 x 13.8 cm.     x, 426 pp.  1996      Irish Literary Studies series (ISSN 0140-895X) volume 47

This volume publishes the papers given at the International Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature's 1993 conference, hosted by the Ain Shams University, Cairo.

 It was the first conference to be held with this theme, which covers Ireland's literary relationships with middle and far-eastern countries, and shows the similarities and differences between literary traditions in different countries as well as the influence of history – for example, both Ireland and Egypt had to extract themselves from British political domination, and both had to take extreme actions to succeed.

The contributions cover the themes of 'Irishness and Egyptianness', 'Myth, Fable and Folklore', 'Regionalism and Cultural Politics', 'Colonialism' and 'The 'Urban and the Rural', with keynote papers by Professors Maureen Murphy ('Folk Narrative Motifs in Egyptian, Irish and Native American Folklore and Literature'), Terry Eagleton ('Form and Ideology in the Anglo-Irish Novel'), Declan Kiberd ('Yeats and the National Longing for Form') and Richard Allen Cave ('The City versus the Village') with other papers covering Irish authors – Samuel Beckett, Elizabeth Bowen, Brendan Behan, Brian Friel, Sir William and Lady Gregory, Lafcadio Hearn, Jennifer Johnston, James Joyce, Brendan Kennelly, Thomas Kinsella, Edward Martyn, C.R.Maturin, George Moore and Thomas Moore, Thomas Murphy, Flann O'Brien, Sean O'Faolain, Eugene O'Neill, Bernard Shaw, James Stephens, Jonathan Swift (compared with Conrad), Honor Tracy, Oscar Wilde, W.B.Yeats – Egyptian, South African and Eastern authors – Abdel Rahman Al-Sharqawi, Mahmoud Diab, Tawfik Elhakim, Yusuf Idris, Goha, Naguib Mahfouz, Yukio Mishima, Etedal Othman, Karel Schoeman – contemporary poetry of Northern Ireland, Egyptian and Irish film, and the literary parallels between 18th century Anglo-Irish and 20th century Egyptian literature.

 

More info →

21.6 x 13.8 cm.        x, 361 pp.   1992    Irish Literary Studies series (ISSN 0140-895X) volume 41

This volume is based on the seventh triennial conference of the International Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature, held in July 1988 at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, Co.Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The international reputation and appeal of Irish literature are reflected in the fact that the contributors are from all corners of the world, North America, Europe, Scandinavia, Africa and India.

The collection reveals the extraordinary influence that Ireland has had on world literature, especially as a model for colonial and nationalist cultures. A host of Irish writers, particularly dramatists, has been translated and adapted in countries attracted to the individuality as well as the universality of their themes. Very often, the outsiders' insight into Irish literature shows a directness and sensitivity which are most illuminating and instructive.

A revelation of this collection is the way so many Irish writers have embraced, and been deeply influenced by, the culture of other nations: important new documentary work on writers such as Maria Edgeworth, W.B.Yeats, George Russell and Derek Mahon are to be found here.

The collection is both a celebration of a truly internationalised field of study, and a tribute to a literature which has successfully emigrated throughout the world. These essays will interest all those, students and scholars alike, who recognise the value of culture and literary pluralism, and the importance of comparative studies.

For over forty years IASAIL, now the Interantional Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (IASIL), has done pioneering work in this field. By now, it may be said, Ireland has taken its rightful place amongst the literatures of the world.

 

At the time of publication Joseph McMinn was Senior Lecturer in the English Department of the University of Ulster at Jordanstown, near Belfast. He has taught in American and Germany, and his publications include John Banville: A Critical Study, Jonathan Swift: A Literary Life and, as editor, Swift's Irish Pamphlets: An Introductory Selection, all three books being published in 1991. He is presently working on an illustrated documentary of Swift's travels around Ireland.

 

More info →

Chosen and Introduced by John Barrett

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

21.6 x 13.8 cm.

Hardcopy ISBN: 0-86140-154-9 / 978-0-86140-154-3 £30.00
Paperback ISBN: 0-86140-155-7 / 978-0-86140-155-0 £9.95

Contains: Where Stars Walk, Ill Met by Moonlight, The Mountains Look Different, The Liar, Prelude in Kasbek Street, selected writings on plays and players, bibliographical checklist.

When he died in 1978, Ireland mourned the passing of the most versatile man of the theatre she has ever known. His acting career started early as a child actor in London, but when he was fourteen he read a single passage of Yeats extolling Ireland's heritage and from then on he was to give himself to the Dublin stage, notably the Gate Theatre which he founded with his partner, Hilton Edwards. John Barrett has mapped out the influences and achievements of this extraordinary character in his introduction and selected five of Macliamm¢ir's most memorable works.

John Barrett taught English at University College, Dublin.

 

More info →

21.6 x 13.8 cm.        xx,  257 pp.  index      1990

Born in Melbourne, Australia, in October 1884, W.J.Turner left his home city in March 1907, determined to create a career for himself as a writer in London. By 1946, when he died, he had contributed to the literary and musical life of England in ways that establish him as a unique and fascinating figure. A man of independent mind and provocative originality, he was perhaps the most outspoken critic of his time and, in Arnold Bennett's judgement, the only one of his generation whom it was a `pleasure to read for the sake of reading', as well as being a poet whose `majestic song' left Yeats, in his own words, `lost in admiration and astonishment'.

Wayne McKenna's work provides an overview of Turner's life and work, discussing his plays, novels, short stories, poetry drama criticism and literary editing, and well as commenting on the more important literary friend ships in his life, such as those with Yeats, Siegfried Sassoon, and Lady Ottoline Morrell.

More info →

Chosen and Introduced by S.F.Gallagher

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

Hardcover ISBN: 0-86140-140-9 / 978-0-86140-140-6 £35.00
Papercover ISBN: 00-86140-141-7 / 978-0-86140-141-3 £10.95

21.6 x 13.8 cm.

Contains: The Au Pair Man, The Patrick Pearse Motel, Da, Summer, A Life, Kill, Bibliographical Checklist.

`Hugh Leonard' is the pen-name of John Keyes Byrne. He is, as Christopher Fitz-Simon has written, `the most prolific and most technically assured of modern Irish playwrights', and his cosmopolitanism is shown by the range of his work, twenty-five plays (eighteen of which have been published), and seven adaptations of others' work for stage, something like thirty individual plays for television, work for over forty TV series totalling well in excess of 120 original episodes, and over 100 episodes for serials based on others' works (Emily Bronte, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Somerville & Ross, for example), as well as over a dozen film scripts. The output is truly phenomenal.

Although a constant contributor to television, it is for the theatre that he has produced his finest work. This selection amply illustrates Leonard's cosmopolitan talent and his constant ability to entertain his audience.

 

More info →

Edited and Introduced by Peter Kuch

32.6 x 13.8 cm.     xxii, 474 pp.  + 2pp. with three colour illus.  2011   Part 4 of the Collected Works of G. W. Russell - 'A.E.'

George William Russell, or AE as he was more familiarly known, was mentor and friend to three generations of Irish writers. To visit or to be sought out by AE was to be assured of a place in Irish literary history. The young James Joyce knocked on his door at midnight; Lady Gregory looked forward to his visits to Coole; Patrick Kavanagh walked from Inniskeen to Dublin to meet him; Yeats regarded him as his ‘oldest friend’; Liam O’Flaherty sought his patronage; Frank O’Connor asked his advice.

As if to guarantee Russell would not be forgotten, George Moore concluded his engaging, gossipy account of the literary movement, Hail and Farewell (1911-14), with a benediction for ‘AE and the rest’. Whether aspiring, accomplished, real or imaginary, Irish writers inevitably found themselves indebted to his practical help and inspired by his spiritual and critical insights. Even Stephen Dedalus admits to himself AEIOU.

This scrupulously researched volume brings together for the first time all of Russell’s writings on poetry, prose, drama and painting—writings central to understanding the role of literature, theatre and art in Ireland’s quest for self-realisation. Included are reviews, prefaces, introductions and articles; letters to the press on censorship and the Irish Academy of Letters; and The Honourable Enid Majoribanks, a hitherto unpublished play. Extensive notes drawing from published and unpublished sources situate each item in terms of text, intertext and context.

Peter Kuch is the inaugural Eamon Cleary Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. The Director of the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at Otago, he is also an Honorary Professor at the John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies at the University of New South Wales. He holds an Honours degree from the University of Wales and an M.Litt and D.Phil from Oxford. He has held posts at the Universities of Newcastle and New South Wales, Australia; L’Université de Caen, France; and been a Visiting Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University, and the Anthony Mason European Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin. The author of Yeats and AE: ‘the antagonism that unites dear friends’ (Colin Smythe, 1988), he is currently researching a cultural history of the performance of Irish theatre in colonial Australasia.

 

CONTENTS<br

Preface <pr

Acknowledgements<br

Introduction<br

1. “The Poetry of William B. Yeats”; 2. “A New Irish Poetess”: review of Eva Gore-Booth, Poems; 3. “Literary Ideals in Ireland”; 4. “Nationality and Cosmopolitanism in Literature”; 5. Review of Eleanor Hull, The Cuchullin Saga in Irish Literature; 6. Review of Edward Martyn, The Heather Field and Maeve 7. “Politics and Character”; 8. “Fiona Macleod’s New Book”: review of The Dominion of Dreams; 9. Review of Fiona Macleod, The Divine Adventure; 10. “A Note on William Larminie” in Stopford Brooke and T.W. Rolleston, eds., A Treasury of Irish Poetry; 11. “The Dramatic Treatment of Heroic Literature”; 12.  “The Character of Heroic Literature”: review of Lady Gregory, Cuchulain of Muirthemne; 13. “The Poetry of William Butler Yeats”; 14. “A Book about the Earth Life”: review of Ethel Longworth Dames, Myths; 15. “A Note on Standish O’Grady” in Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature; 16. “Preface” to New Songs; 17. “A Note on Seamus O’Sullivan”; 18. Review of T.W. Rolleston, The High Deeds of Finn; 19. “The Poetry of James Stephens”; 20. “The Boyhood of a Poet”; 21. “A Tribute to Standish O’Grady”; 22. “On Quality of Sound”; 23. Foreword to Shan F. Bullock, Mors et Vita; 24.  Foreword to Liam O’Flaherty, The Black Soul; 25. Foreword to F.R. Higgins, Island Blood; 26. Foreword to Hugh Alexander Law, Anglo-Irish Literature; 27. “Address to the Thirtieth Annual Dinner of the American-Irish Historical Society”; 28. “The Censorship in Ireland”; 29. Introduction to Oliver St. John Gogarty, Wild Apples; 30. Foreword to Katharine Tynan, Collected Poems; 31. Review of Humbert Wolfe, Snow; 32. Introductory Essay to Hugh MacDiarmuidFirst Hymn to Lenin and Other Poems; 33. “On the Character in Irish Literature” in Frank O’ConnorThe Wild Bird’s Nest: Poems Translated from the Irish; 34. "The New Irish Academy – AE replies to Father Gannon”; 35. “The Irish Academy of Letters: Letter from AE”; 36. “The New Irish Academy: Letter from AE”; 37. “The New Irish Academy: Letter from AE”; 38. “Oliver St. John Gogarty: An Appreciation”; 39. Foreword to Oliver St. John Gogarty, em>Selected Poems; 40. Introduction to Seamus O’Sullivan, Twenty-five Lyrics; 41. Introduction to Irene Haugh, The Valley of Bells and Other Poems; 42. “Memories of A.R. Orage”; 43. “An Appreciation” of Ruth Pitter, A Mad Lady’s Garland; 44. Foreword to Joseph O’Neill, Land Under England; 45. “The Sunset of Fantasy”; 46. Deirdre: A Legend in Three Acts; 47. The Honourable Enid Majoribanks: a Comedy; 48. “Art in Ireland”; 49. “An Irish Sculptor: John Hughes”; 50. “The Spiritual Influence of Art”; 51. “Two Irish Artists”; 52. “An Artist of Gaelic Ireland”; 53. “Art and Literature”; 54. “Art and Barbarism”; 55. “The Lane Bequest”; 56. “An Appreciation” of J.B. Yeats, Essays: Irish and American; 57. “Hugh Lane’s Pictures”; 58. “Some Irish Artists”

Appendices:<br

Preface to Some Irish Essays; Prefaces to Imaginations and Reveries; “Nationality or Cosmopolitanism – 1925 text”; The Countess of the Wheel; Britannia Rule-the-Wave: A Comedy; “AE’s Oration: George Moore”; “An Artist of Gaelic Ireland – 1908 text”<br

Abbreviations used in Glossary of Mythological References and Notes and Commentary; Glossary of Mythological References; Guide to Notes and Commentary; Notes and Commentary – Literary Writings; Notes and Commentary – Writings on Art; Notes and Commentary – Appendices; Bibliography; Index

More info →

21.6 x 13.8 cm.   xviii, 489 pp.    2003  Irish Literary Studies series (ISSN 0140-895X) volume 52

Since Mary McAleese embraced the expatriate and emigrant Irish in her inaugural Presidential address, much has been made of the global Irish family. This exciting collection of essays by a group of eminent scholars explores the teaching and research of Irish  literature in a region of the world that has scouted the attractions of western culture since the sixteenth century. Three or four centuries later those attractions, as far as the Irish are concerned, have become specific.

It is reasonably well-known that in his own life-time W.B. Yeats was invited to take up a Professorship in Japan; that Ulysses has been translated at least three times into Chinese; that the plays of George Bernard Shaw apparently strike a chord with students in Hong Kong; that the fairy-tales of Wilde are reverenced in China; and that the Irish influence on Australian literature has been pervasive if not profound.

But what is not well-known are the contexts for these and other interrelations. Irelands in the Asia-Pacific explores these in a sequence of articles grouped under the headings of: Writing an Irish Self; Joyce at large; Post-Colonial readings of Irish Literature; Antipodean Connections; Teaching Irish Literature in the Asia-Pacific; and Irish Literature Down-Under.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Section 1: Writing an Irish Self

Shakespeare and the Irish Self. Terence Brown

‘Not a disease but a social necessity!’ Shaw and the Function of the Artist. T.F. Evans

The Silver Mirror & the Woven Veil: Oscar Wilde & the Art of Criticism. Julie-Ann Robson

Reading Food: Feast and Famine in Irish Women’s Writing. Joan Coldwell

Eavan Boland: the Complex State of the Woman Poet. Maurice Harmon

Section 2: Joyce at Large

Bloom’s appeal to the peoples of the world. Jin Di

National Apostate vs National Apostle: Joyce and St. Patrick. Bruce Stewart

Mothers/Mirrors: Sources of Self-Image in Irish Modernism. Diane Stubbings

James Joyce and the Dreamwork of Language: The Book from the Twenty-first Century. Donald E. Morse

Section 3: Post-Colonial Readings of Irish Writing

Post-Colonial Interpretation: The case of The Playboy. Nicholas Grene

Irish Post-Colonial Drama: A Hungarian View. Csilla Bertha

Ireland, Post-Colonial Transformation and Global Culture. Bill Ashcroft

Section 4: Antipodean Connections

John, Willy, Lily, George, Gilbert ... and Arthur: My Australian Connections. Ann Saddlemyer

Ascendancy Down-Under: George Bernard Shaw’s Irish & Australian Relations. A.M.Gibbs

The Port Phillip Gentlemen: Still Neglected. Jarlath Ronayne

The Emigrant’s Friends: Three Women. Maureen Murphy

The Scotch-Irish in 18th century America and their Counterparts in 19th century Australia: A Comparative Study of Relations between Colonists and Natives on Two Frontiers. James E. Doan

Section 5: Teaching Irish Literature in the Asia-Pacific

The Reception of W.B. Yeats in Modern China. Linda Pui-ling Wong

Modern Irish Literature in an Asian Context: Relevance and Advantages. Andrew Parkin

The ‘Sense of Happiness’ must not Disappear: Teaching Irish Literature in Japan. Taketoshi Furomoto

Re-reading Irishness: The problem of Lafcadio Hearn and Japan. George Hughes

Japan as Celtic Otherworld: Lafcadio Hearn and the Long Way Home. Ciaran Murray

Section 6: Irish Literature Down-Under

‘The weight of social opinion on [his] side’?: Ulysses, Censorship, Modernism and Canonisation, Australian-style. Frances Devlin-Glass

Through The Irish Looking Glass: School Experience of Irish Literature, History and Culture in Australia. Donna Gibbs

The Burden of Tyre and ‘the Loyal Gael’: The Expatriate Muse in the work of Christopher Brennan. Justin Lucas

‘Too Cold and Wide for the Tender Plant of the Irish Language to Thrive in?’ The Teaching of the Irish Language in Australia: 1880-1960. Jonathan M. Wooding

Notes and References – Notes on Contributors – Index

This collection of papers was given at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, at a conference convened under the aegis of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (IASIL).

More info →

21.6 x 13.8 cm.    xiv, 291 pp. + 16 pp. with 33 illus.  

During his life, W.B.Yeats formed only a few literary friendships from which he received as much as he gave. One of the foremost was his association with George William Russell. ‘A.E. was my oldest friend’ he confided to an admirer on Russell’s death in 1935. ‘We began our work together.’

This engaging, carefully researched book charts the history and evaluates the significance of the first twenty-three years of that work. It begins with the early months of 1884 when Yeats and Russell first met at the Arts Schools in Kildare Street, Dublin, and ends with their divisive quarrels in 1907 about the policies of the Abbey Theatre.

Taking as its focal point Yeats’s summary of the association – ‘between us as always there existed that antagonism that unites dear friends’ – the book sensitively gauges the pressures that each man exerted on the other. It also examines the way these pressures both affected their respective imaginative developments and shaped the course of the literary movement.

'What Kuch sets out to do, he does scrupulously and with such attention to detail, minutiae even, that his scholarly apparatus takes up nearly a quarter of the book. It is indeed "carefully researched".' Derek Mahon in The Irish Times

More info →