Angela Bourke


Life
1952- ; b. Dublin; ed. UCD; MA in Celtic Studies; won NUI travelling studentship, 1974 and proceeded to Univ. de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest (France); completed doctoral study on women’s religious poetry in Irish folklore; visiting professor at Harvard and Univ. of Minnesota, and lectured widely in Europe, N. America and Japan; appt. lecturer in Modern Irish in UCD; issued Caoineadh na dTrí Muire: Téama na Páise i bhFilíocht Bhéil na Gaeilge (1983); winner of Frank O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, 1992;
 
issued By Salt Water (1996), stories; also The Burning of Bridget Cleary (1999), winner of The Irish Times Non-Fiction Award and ACIS James S. Donnelly Prize, 2001; ed., with others, The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Vol. 4 [Women’s Writing] (2002); first holder of Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco) bursary for academic writers, Autumn 2002; issued a life of Maeve Brennan (2004).

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Works
Folklore studies & biography
  • Caoineadh na dTrí Muire: Téama na Páise i bhfílocht bhéil na Gaeilge [Leabhair thaighde ser.] (Baile Átha Cliath: An Clóchomhar Tta, 1983), xv, 335pp.
  • The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story (London: Pimlico 1999), xiii, 240pp. ill., maps [listed among “5 Books to Remember” by NYPL].
  • Maeve Brennan of the New Yorker (London: Jonathan Cape 2004), 192pp.
Fiction
  • By Salt Water (Dublin: New Island 1996), 186pp. [see contents].
  • “Iníon Rí na Cathrach Deirge” ((1989) and “Iníon Rí na Oileáin Dhorca (1991), stories.

Query: contrib. to David Marcus, ed., The Irish Condition (q.d.).
Miscellaneous
  • ‘Working and Weeping: Women’s Oral Poetry in Irish and Scottish Gaelic Poetry’, in Women’s Studies Working Papers, No. 7 (UCD Women’s Studies Forum 1988) [establishes that the formal keen was a professional exhibition of grief obviating emotional breakdown in the begrieved].
  • intro. to Anna Rackard, Fishstonewater: Holy Wells of Ireland (Cork: Atrium 2001), 144pp., ill. [photos. by Liam O’Callaghan].
  • ed., with others, The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Vols. 4 & 5 (FDA/Cork UP 2002) [supplementary women’s vols.].
  • ‘Adventures with old things’, in The Dublin Review, 4 (Autumn 2001), pp.5-13 [A visit to the dump, formerly site of the fort of Cú Roi [Cathair Con Roi], and another to the Shamrock Byegones Museum, Ballybrack Co. Kerry].
Lectures

incl. plenary lecture at ‘Ideology and Ireland in the Nineteeth Century’ (UCG, 28-30 June 1996.)

Bibliographical details
By Salt Water (Dublin: New Island 1996), 186pp, incls. “Secret Passages”, The Way Back Home”, “Dreams of Sailing”, “Camouflage””, “Blue Murder”, Nesting”,”Mayonnaise to the Hills”, “Le Soleil et le Vent”, “The Whale in the Garden”, ,”Lemon Grass”, “Una”, “Majella”s Quilt”, “Beauty Treatment”, “Charm”, “Ham”, “Ohio by the Ocean”, “Pinkeens”, “Deep Down” [involving vision of an aerial ship seen by the monks of Clonmacnois]. (Cited in Philip O’Leary - as infra.

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Commentary
Philip O’Leary & Rebecca Tracy, ‘Two Views’, review of By Salt Water (New Island 1996), in Irish Literary Supplement (Fall 1996), p.8 - remarks: Una Fitzsimons, “one of the medium bold girls, not one of the really bold ones”, is the central character of six stories.

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Notes
Bridget Cleary: Other studies of Bridget Cleary incl. Carlo Gébler, The Cure (London: Hamish Hamilton/Abacus; NY: Little, Brown & Co. 1994), a novel, and Joan Hoff & Marian Yeates, The Cooper’s Wife is Missing (Oxford: Perseus Books 2001), a further work on the death of Bridget Cleary.

COPAC lists Caoineadh [... &c.] by Angela Partridge [sic].

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