Best of
Ireland

1992

The Collected Stories


William Trevor - 1992
    Here is a collection of his short fiction, with dozens of tales spanning his career and ranging from the moving to the macabre, the humorous to the haunting. From the penetrating 'Memories of Youghal' to the bittersweet 'Bodily Secrets' and the elegiac 'Two More Gallants', here are masterpieces of insight, depth, drama and humanity, acutely rendered by a modern master.'A textbook for anyone who ever wanted to write a story, and a treasure for anyone who loves to read them' Madison Smartt Bell'Extraordinary... Mr. Trevor's sheer intensity of entry into the lives of his people...proceeds to uncover new layers of yearning and pain, new angles of vision and credible thought' The New York Times Book Review

The Collected Stories


John McGahern - 1992
    On struggling farms, in Dublin's rain-drenched streets, or in parched exile in Franco's Spain, McGahern's characters wage a confused but touching war against the facts of life.

The Singing Flame


Ernie O'Malley - 1992
    The Singing Flame covers the period 1922-1924, and has been called a "work of great historical importance" -- Irish Independent.

Irish Myths and Legends


Michael Scott - 1992
    From the epic Irish legend of Cuchulain to tales of banshees, leprechauns and wizards, these short stories and fables cover a wide range of Ireland's mythology and legends, forming a companion volume to Michael Scott's Irish Folk and Fairy Tales.

The Gonne-Yeats Letters, 1893 - 1938


W.B. Yeats - 1992
    Some of Yeats's greatest poems chronicle his long obsession with her, among them A Woman Homer Sang, Reconciliation, and No Second Troy:What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this, Being high and solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn? We tend to see Maud Gonne through his prism--a firebrand, a great beauty, above all a political fanatic who made him suffer like mad. These letters tell a more complex tale, since the majority are hers, most of Yeats's having been destroyed. What he portrayed as extremism instead becomes deep political involvement: her letters record an endless round of meetings, protests, and good works. In addition, the concern she again and again manifests for Yeats mitigates his cries of indifference; rather, Maud Gonne emerges as steady and heroic. Even as she was preparing to marry John MacBride, she took time out to console her longtime suitor in a characteristic run-on: "Friend of mine au revoir. I shall go over to Ireland in a couple of months, if you care to see me I shall be so glad & you will find I think that I am just the same woman you have always known, marriage won't change me I think at all...." The editors declare the original letter "very crumpled and creased as if carried in Yeats's pocket and taken out and read many times."

The Village


Alice Taylor - 1992
    The book combines laughter, pathos and innocence with the gossip of a closely-knit community.

Marconi's Cottage


Medbh McGuckian - 1992
    In the deft and mysterious poems of Marconi’s Cottage, McGuckian evokes the uncanny presence of a muse whose “unseduceable two rows of small black doors” hinge life and death, the two sides of a single page, views from a room that faces in and out.

Sweeney's Flight


Seamus Heaney - 1992
    Heaney has written a preface to this joint work, and the second half contains the complete revised poem.

Collected Poems 1951-2000


Charles Causley - 1992
    . . hardly a page in this handsome volume fails to impress and enchant with technical virtuosity and unnerving imagination' Alan Brownjohn, "Sunday Times"

A History of Ulster


Jonathan Bardon - 1992
    comprehensive account of the province, spanning nine thousand years of social, political and economic life: the early settlements; the Viking and Norman invasions; the plantations and the Penal Laws; the rise of the United Irishmen and Orangeism; the Act of Union; emigration and the Great Famine; the linen industry and shipbuilding; the Home Rule crisis and partition; the Second World War and the blitz; civil rights and the turmoil of the current troubles. historians and the wider reading public, and quickly became established as the definitive book on the subject. For this edition Jonathan Bardon has written an introductory chapter covering events since 1992. His description of the process that saw the region emerge from thirty years of brutal conflict and move haltingly towards peace is a fitting coda to this classic of Irish history. major new history disentangles the past and captures Ulster in all its energy and obduracy.

The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide To Great Britain And Ireland


Dorothy Eagle - 1992
    This trip normally takes under four hours. His literarypilgrimage took four days. Now in a new edition, with over 100 places added, as well as 137 more authors, this beautifully illustrated, over-sized volume lists hundreds of places in Britain and Ireland and details their connections with the lives of famous writers. This popular guide provides over 300 illustrations ofwriters, their houses, and the landscapes that inspired them, as well as a wealth of curious information and entertaining anecdotes. Take a tour of Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey, where you can find Chaucer's canopied tomb, a monument to Shakespeare with lines from The Tempest, the grave ofDickens, and tablets to Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot, and W.H. Auden, among many others. Read how the Cumbrian Lake District's breathtaking scenery inspired the Lake Poets Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, and how Keats' Ode to a Grecian Urn was written after he saw the Athenian sculptures at theBritish Museum. Walk through Chelsea to see where of A.A. Milne, Mark Twain, and Bram Stoker lived. Or travel off the beaten path, to Liverpool, for instance, where bankruptcy led Washington Irving to write the great American classic Rip Van Winkle, or to Muckross, where the author of BaronMunchausen, himself a spinner of tall tales, conned a landowner into buying property planted with samples of rich ore, or to Near Sawrey, where Beatrix Potter owned a seventeenth-century farmhouse. Arranged for easy reference, with maps and an index of writers, The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to Great Britain and Ireland will help readers experience the richness of this great literary heritage.

The Last Prince of Ireland


Morgan Llywelyn - 1992
    There the Gaelic nobility who held sway over Ireland for two thousand years were finally and resolutely crushed by the English invaders. There would follow four hundred years of English domination.The Last Prince is Donal Cam O'Sullivan, still determined after the battle not to surrender his homeland. He flees with his clan toward an inland stronghold, as the Gaelic nation is ripped apart not only by war but by the seed of betrayal planted by the English, whose powerful bribes turn brother against brother. The awesome saga of Donal Cam and his clan's winter journey is a powerful vision of honor and betrayal, pride and desperation. Morgan Llywelyn captures the heart of the Irish struggle to survive.

Illustrated guide to Ireland


Reader's Digest Association - 1992
    It also provides a real flavor of the people and places, the culture, history, myths, and legends. Includes a glossary of Irish terms, and local and regional maps.

The Copper Beech


Maeve Binchy - 1992
    But not even Father Gunn, the parish priest, who knows most of what goes on behind Shancarrig's closed doors, or Dr. Jims, the village doctor, who knows all the rest, realizes that not everything in the placid village is what it seems. From the Hardcover edition.

Maamtrasna: The Murders and the Mystery


Jarlath Waldron - 1992
    

Walking North with Keats


Carol Kyros Walker - 1992
    In 1818, when Keats was 22-years old, he and his friend Charles Brown embarked on a walking tour through northern England, Ireland and Scotland, starting in Lancaster and finishing 44 days and over 600 miles later, in Scotland, just north of Inverness.

Big Boys' Rules: The SAS and the Secret Struggle against the IRA


Mark Urban - 1992
    Drawing on interviews with people who have served at the heart of intelligence and special operations in Ulster, as well as with members of paramilitary groups, this book examines the roles of the army, the police and special branch, as well as both MI5 and MI6. The book also looks at the shoot to kill allegations, and records members of the security forces describing the deliberate deception of the press and courts in Ulster. The author also reveals many details including the events which lead up to the killing of eight IRA members in May 1987 in the village of Loughgall.

The Mabinogi


Anonymous - 1992
    The most famous body of Welsh prose narrative known

The Men Of No Property: Irish Radicals And Popular Politics In The Late Eighteenth Century


Jim Smyth - 1992
    It focuses on the lower-class secret society, the Defenders, and the more familiar face of radicalism in this period, the Society of United Irishmen. Particular attention is paid to the vigorous traditions of street protest in eighteenth-century Dublin. The picture which emerges is of a revolutionary movement which was both more radical in its rhetoric and objectives and more popular in its social base than has previously been allowed.

Memoirs of Chaplain Life: Three Years in the Irish Brigade with the Army of the Potomac


William Corby - 1992
    Comprised of troops from New York who were mostly Irish-Catholics, this unit proved itself in some of the most important battles of the war. A principal player in this unit was the chaplin, Father William Corby. Through his devotions and his willingness to be ever-present at the encampments, as well as at the front, the souls of the Irish Brigade were always cared for. A combination biography, history of the Irish Brigade, day-to-day look into the lives of Civil War soldiers, and reflection on the Catholic faith, this book is wonderfully written in Corby's own words. All the aspects of his life come together here. Recommended for public and academic libraries.

Mythic Ireland


Michael Dames - 1992
    This work explores Ireland's four provinces to discover the places at the root of Irish myth and legend. Focal mythic sites such as St Patrick's Purgatory in Ulster, Loster Gur in Munster and Dublin in Leinster, are described in detail. Finally Ireland is surveyed from a fifth province Mide where the entire island is seen to be held in a web of pre-historic sites aligned with solar-lunar events. Ireland's sacred locations take on contemporary relevance as the book shows that the underlying concerns of myth - conservation and recurrence - are increasingly present concerns.

The New Model Army in England, Ireland, and Scotland, 1645-1653


Ian Gentles - 1992
    Taking his evidence from contemporary sources, Ian Gentles describes its formation under Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, their innovative tactics, the course of its decisive victories over the forces of Charles I, and its ferociously successful campaigns against the Scots and the Irish. As importantly, he examines the motivations and aspirations of the soldiers and their officers. The question of how far the New Model was a revolutionary army and how far a body of men whose religious passion was manipulated for the pragmatic, personal, or even conservative aims of its leaders is one that has occupied the minds of historians for three centuries. Ian Gentles provides a convincing resolution of this debate, raising new evidence to support his argument.

Beloved Enemy


Maura Seger - 1992
    Summoned home to Dungannon Castle, the ebony-haired beauty vowed to fight for freedom against the despised English invaders. Then the stormy winds of fortune swept into the arms of her most dangerous enemy. John Delacroix, Earl of Bradford, risked his life to faithfully serve England's monarch. A rugged soldier of fortune, he was dispatched to Ireland on a secret mission. While posing as an itinerent poet, he gained access to Dungannon Castle and there he saw the heart-stopping Irish heiress he knew he must possess no matter what the cost.