Irish Literature The Eighteenth Century: An Annotated Anthology, with a foreword by Brendan Kennelly (Dublin: Irish Academic Press 2005), xx, 402pp.  Publisher’s notice: irish Literature Eighteenth Century illustrates not only the impressive achievement of the great writers - Swift, Berkeley, Burke, Goldsmith and Sheridan-but also shows the varied accomplishment of others, providing unexpected, entertaining examples from the pens of the less well known. Here are examples of the witty comic dramas so successfully written by Susannah Centlivre, Congreve, Steele, Farquhar and Macklin. There are serious and humorous essayists represented, including Steele, Lord Orrery, Thomas Sheridan and Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Beginning with Gulliver’s Travels, fiction includes John Amory’s strange imaginings, Sterne’s stream of consciousness, Frances Sheridan’s insights, Henry Brooke’s sentimentalities and Goldsmith’s charm. Poetry ranges from the classical to the innovative. Graceful lyrics, anonymous jeux d'esprit, descriptive pieces, savage satires and personal poems are written by very different poets, among them learned witty women, clergymen and drunken ne'er-do-wells. Politicians, notably Grattan and Curran, produced eloquent speeches; effective essays and pamphlets accompanied political activity. Personal letters and diaries-such as the exuberant Dorothea Herbert’s Recollections convey the changing ethos of this century’s literature, based on the classics and moving to an increasing interest in the translation of Irish literature. This book conveys its fascinating liveliness and rich variety.

Contents: Appreciation of A.N. Jeffares -- Foreword by Brendan Kennelly -- Introduction -- Nahum Tate (1652-1715); Susannah Centlivre (?1667-1723); Jonathan Swift (1667-1745); John Toland (1670-1722); William Congreve (1670-1779); Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729); George Farquhar (?1677-1707); John Winstanley (?1678-1750); Thomas Parnell (1679-1718); George Berkeley (1685-1753); Patrick Delany (1685-1768); Thomas Sheridan (1687-1738); Mary Barber (1690-1757); Thomas Amory (?1691-1788); Charles Macklin (?1697-1797); George Faulkner (?1699-1775); Laurence Whyte (?1700-1755); Lord Orrery (1701-1762); Matthew Pilkington (?1701-1774); Henry Brooke (?1703-1783); Constantia Grierson (1703/1705-1732); Anne Berkeley (1706-1786); William Dunkin (?1709-1765); Laetitia Pilkington (?1707/1712-1750); Laurence Sterne (1713-1768); James Eyre Weekes (?1719-1754); Thomas Sheridan (1719-1788); Frances Sheridan (1724-1760); Anonymous -- Edmund Burke (1729-1797); Oliver Goldsmith (?1730-1774); Charlotte Brooke (?1740-1793); George Ogle (?1740/42-1814); Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817); Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) and Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817); Henry Grattan (1746-1820); John O'Keeffe (1747-1833); John Philpot Curran (1750-1817); Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816); William Drennan (1754-1820); Patrick O'Kelly (1754-1835?); The Abbé Edgeworth (1745-1807); Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-1798); Edward Bunting (1773-1845); Thomas Dermody (1775-1802); Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849); Dorothea Herbert (1768/1770-1829). [See COPAC - online; last accessed 16.02.2024.]

Irish Literature The Nineteenth Century Volume II: An Annotated Anthology, with a foreword by Conor Cruise O’Brien (Dublin: IAP 2006), 534pp. Publisher’s notice: The second of the three volumes, roughly spans the middle decades of the nineteenth century, a period dominated by the enormity of the Great Famine. Its terror is recorded in first-hand accounts and in the powerless yet forceful reactions which this cataclysmic event engendered in such writers as John Mitchel (who in his Jail Journal pits the self against the state). This volume documents the rise of cultural nationalism, in the work of the contributors to The Nation (Davis, Mangan, Lady Wilde), and the response of Unionist intelligentsia in the Dublin University Magazine. It juxtaposes the authentic Gaelic voice in translation (Ferguson and Walsh) against the haunting intensity of Mangan and the non-conformism of his fellow inauthenticator Father Prout. It witnesses the stage Irishman in Lever’s fiction being placed on Boucicault’s popular podium, in his reworking of Gerald Griffin’s account of The Colleen Bawn. It records the rise of Fenianism (in such writers as Charles Kickham), and it sees Ireland taking stock (in the work of W.E.H. Lecky). It notes the emergence of a new literary confidence in the works of Sigerson and Todhunter. It extends well beyond examinations of Irish identity, not only in encapsulating popular writing, but also by incorporating writers of Irish descent who investigated different cultures. [The contents of this volume are not available in COPAC - online.]

Irish Literature The Nineteenth Century Volume III: An Annotated Anthology, with a foreword by Bruce Arnold (Dublin: IAP 2007), xxi, 534pp. Publisher’s notice: The last of the three volumes, roughly spans the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, a period which saw the emergence of the Land League, the dynamiting campaign of the Fenians, and the rise and fall of Charles Stewart Parnell. It witnessed changes in all literary genres. Standish James O"Grady conveyed a sense of heroic excitement in his affirmation of Gaelic Ireland’s literary heritage. Douglas Hyde promoted Irish language and culture through his foundation of the Gaelic League. Writers affiliated with the Irish Literary Society tried to re-energise Young Ireland’s ideals of cultural nationalism. Under the aegis of Ireland’s literary renaissance a new interest in Celticism became manifest. The year after the publication of Allingham’s Collected Poems, W.B. Yeats’s The Wanderings of Oisin marked the emergence of Irish mythology and legend in an elegant, sensuous and highly influential manner. With Wilde, Shaw, Martyn and George Moore he expanded Ireland’s aesthetic horizons; as Yeats introduced French Symbolisme in The Secret Rose and The Wind Among the Reeds, Oscar Wilde preached the paradoxes of decadence, Shaw uncovered society’s hypocrisies, while Martyn embraced Ibsen’s social realism, and Moore combined Zola’s naturalism with the synaesthesia of Totalkunst. Major writers combined to form Ireland’s National Theatre. Pioneers such as Lafcadio Hearn were exploring different cultures, which were to influence European literature and drama. The last decades of the nineteenth century were a powerfully creative period, rich in its literary collaborations, and profoundly impressive in its vitality. [The contents of this volume are not available in COPAC - online.]