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.

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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.

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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

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: 978-0-901072-52-8
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.

ISBN: 978-0-901072-53-5

21.6 x 13.8 cm.     iv, 404 pp.    1979      Volume 2 of the Dramatic Works of Denis Johnston

Contains: A Bride for the Unicorn, The Moon in the Yellow River, A Fourth for Bridge, The Golden Cuckoo, Nine Rivers from Jordan, The Tain (a pageant), and 'Introducing the enigmatic Dean Swift'.

hardback ISBN: 0-86140-080-1 / 978-0-86140-080-5 £35.00
three-quarter leather signed edition limited to 25 copies
ISBN: 0-86140-081-X / 978-0-86140-081-2 £150.00

21.6 x 13.8 cm.      516 pp.   1992
Volume 3 of the Dramatic Works of Denis Johnston

Edited by Joseph Ronsley

Publication of the third volume completes the collection of Johnston's work. Volume 3, The Radio and Television Plays, is in many ways the most interesting, not least because Johnston was one of the founding fathers of BBC drama and a major influence on viewers' very perception of what a television play consists of. Also printed in this collection are a number of articles and other prose writings about drama on radio and television. After a very happy pre-war period working for BBC Radio Northern Ireland, he moved to the embryonic television service at Alexandra Palace - he was one of the few to have been temporarily thrown out of television when broadcasting ceased for the duration of hostilities and he became a BBC Radio War Reporter. An interesting feature of the TV scripts is the early development of television script-writing technique, which, as these faithful reproductions from extant typescripts show, grew out of the conventions used in play-scripts.

Contents: 

Radio Plays: Lillibulero, Multiple Studio Blues, Great Parliamentarians: Lord Palmerston, High Command, The Gorgeous Lady Blessington, Amanda McKittrick Ros, In the Train;
Television Drama: The Parnell Commission, Weep for the Cyclops, The Call to Arms, Operations at Killyfaddy, Murder Hath No Tongue;
Essays on Broadcasting; Reviews; Appendices: Blind Man's Buff, Riders to the Sidhe; A Radio Talk.

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

With a Foreword by Jon Stallworthy

ISBN: 978-0-900675-41-6

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

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

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

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