From “Guests of the Nation” to “The Mad Lomasneys” to “First Confession” to “My Oedipus Complex,” these tales of Ireland have touched generations of readers the world over and placed O'Connor alongside W. B. Yeats and James Joyce as the greatest of Irish authors.Analyzing a Robert Browning poem, O'Connor once wrote: “Since a whole lifetime must be crowded into a few minutes, those minutes must be carefully chosen indeed and lit by an unearthly glow.” Each of the sixty-seven stories gathered here achieves the same incredible feat of the imagination, laying bare entire lives and histories within the space of a few pages. Dublin schoolteacher Ned Keating waves good-bye to a charming girl and to any thoughts of returning to his village home in the lyrical and melancholy “Uprooted.” A boy on an important mission is waylaid by a green-eyed temptress and seeks forgiveness in his mother’s loving arms in “The Man of the House,” a tale that draws on O'Connor’s own difficult childhood. A series of awkward encounters and humorous misunderstandings perfectly encapsulates the complicated legacy of Irish immigration in “Ghosts,” the bittersweet account of an American family’s pilgrimage to the land of their forefathers.As a writer, critic, and teacher, O'Connor elevated the short story to astonishing new heights. This career-spanning anthology, epic in scope yet brimming with the small moments and intimate details that earned him a reputation as Ireland’s Chekhov, is a testament to Frank O’Connor's magnificent storytelling and a true pleasure to read from first page to last.

    He was world-famous by the time of his death, having being elected to the British Parliament while on hunger strike. In prison, Sands secretly wrote on toilet paper and cigarette papers, writings that were smuggled out of prison. With dry humour they chart in prose and poetry of one man's attempt to preserve his identity while enduring terrible prison conditions. Writings from Prison has become a classic.

    A survey of Irish poetry includes works from the seventh century to poems by Joyce, Yeats, and Moore.

    In this second volume, titled "The Silver-Armed Warrior", Jim Fitzpatrick resorts again to that treasure house of his Irish childhood, a cultural heritage shared and transmitted not only by Yeats & Lady Gregory but by a thousand unknown voices telling the lovingly guarded stories to countless generations of children and adults alike.

    . . ‘a magnificient book. I cannot think of any venture in Irish publishing of recent years so high in its ideals and achievement, so deep in its scholarship and enthusiasm, so broad in its range and appeal.’ (Paul Muldoon, The Irish Times) . . . ‘a large and worthwhile undertaking, diligently and often triumphantly carried out . . . invaluable to every student of Irish literature; and, with its inclusion of so much unfamiliar material, instructive and absorbing to everyone else.’ (Patricia Craig, The New York Review of Books).The primary purpose of An Duanaire 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. Thomas Kinsella’s English translations, all new, aim 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.Daoine a bhfuil Nua-Ghaeilge éigin acu is mó a bhainfidh leas as an saothar seo. Is é atá sna haistriúcháin ná téacsanna a léifí bonn ar bhonn leis na buntéacsanna, agus a bheadh ina gcabhair dóibh siúd ar mhaith leo tuiscint níos cruinne a fháil ar an dánta Gaeilge . . . ‘Mar ghníomh creidimh I bhfilíocht Ghaeilge na tréimhse sin ina bhfuil ár scoilteacha cultúir lonnaithe, agus i leanúnachas traidisiún na filíochta Gaeilge, is cloch mhíle an-tábhachtach An Duanaire.’ (Liam Ó Muirthile, Innti 6).‘An Duanaire is a re-education in our poetry, a recuperative event. The range is great, in time and substance . . . Seán Ó Tuama and Thomas Kinsella have given a book of great worth and importance, one that could mark an epoch . . . a whole thing that is, as the best judges have always believed poetry should be, dulce et utile.’ (Seamus Heaney, The Sunday Tribune).

    This book traces the era between the 5th & 12th centuries, when Ireland became the repository of classical Western civilization. Examining the meeting of two disparate cultures--the pagan Celts & the Christian saints & scholars--the author discusses how illuminated manuscripts, monastic libraries, and Romanesque churches preserved culture until the rest of Europe awakened from the Dark Ages.

    Consistent recognition of these hidden significances in Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man would require an encyclopedic knowledge of life in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Dublin such as few readers possess. Now this substantially revised and expanded edition of Don Gifford's Notes to Joyce: "Dubliners" and "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" puts the requisite knowledge at the disposal of scholars, students, and general readers. An ample introductory essay supplies the historical, biographical, and geographical background for Dubliners and Portrait. The annotations that follow gloss place names, define slang terms, recount relevant gossip, give capsule histories of institutions and political and cultural movements and figures, supply bits of local and Irish legend and lore, explain religious nomenclature and practices, and illuminate cryptic allusions to literature, theology, philosophy, science and the arts. Professor Gifford's labors in gathering these data into a single volume have resulted in an invaluable source-book for all students of Joyce's art.

    In their wake came peasants, craftsmen and traders, to settle mainly in the lowlands of the south and east. English law and forms of government were also transplanted, as the Plantagenet kings asserted their authority, turning Ireland into a lordship where they could reward those around them with lands and rights, and from which they expected financial returns and support in their wars. No part of the island was unaffected by the military and political activities of the Anglo-Normans, who upset existing power-structures and faced Irish rulers with complex pressures and choices. This book examines the processes of conquest and colonization, against the background of economic expansion and seigneurial enterprise apparent elsewhere in Britain and Europe. It also explores the nature and extent of colonial retreat, and the political and cultural adjustments that were evident amid the less favourable conditions of the 14th century. The book, originally published in 1981, has been revised and expanded for the present illustrated edition, which also contains a guide to more recent work

    

    . . . The telling is direct and spirited, lilting and sensitively balanced, encompassing the bardic and the royal traditions of ancient Ireland as well as the joyful zeal of the saint.--The Horn Book.

    The post-Treaty period in Ireland has been an era of intense debate about the nature and future of Irish society and culture. In a state born in violence and divided by bitter quarrels, wars both literal and cultural have raged over what it means to be Irish—and what it is possible for Ireland to achieve. Professor Brown traces the development of modern Ireland through nationalism, industrialism, religion, language revival, and censorship combined with an assessment of the major literary and artistic advances accomplished in this climate. Now updated for the new millennium, this is a classic study of an emergent nation.