Irish Literary Classics

Literary Texts
Irish Literary Classics Various Irish Writers
Celtic Texts & Criticism

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Classic Irish Authors
William Allingham
Samuel Beckett
George Birmingham
Edmund Burke
William Carleton
T. Crofton Croker
Maria Edgeworth
John Eglinton
Samuel Ferguson
Augusta Gregory
Oliver Goldsmith
Gerald Griffin
Douglas Hyde
James Joyce
Patrick Kavanagh
Geoffrey Keating
Benedict Kiely
J. S. Le Fanu
Thomas McCarthy
Charles McGlinchey
Louis MacNeice
Charles Macklin
C. R. Maturin
J. C. Mangan
John Mitchel
George Moore
Thomas Moore
Flann O’Brien
Kate O’Brien
O’Casey, Sean
Liam O’Flaherty
Seamus O’Kelly
Sydney Owenson
Walter Pater
St. Patrick
George Russell
G. B. Shaw
Somerville & Ross
Edmund Spenser
Henry de Stacpoole
Richard Stanihurst
James Stephens
Bram Stoker
Jonathan Swift
J. M. Synge
Th. Wolfe Tone
Oscar Wilde
W. B. Yeats

[ Texts and extracts from numerous authors of lesser weight than those listed as Classics in Ricorso are given in the adjacent “Irish Writers” index - as infra. Several several English writers of significant influence and importance for major Irish authors are included in the listing of Classic Irish Authors on this page. Online links to internet version of texts by Irish authors are collated at RICORSO Gateway > “Individual Authors” - supra. ]


 

Major Authors
W. B. Yeats Poems, Plays, Fiction, and Critical Writings
James Joyce Fiction, Poetry and Critical Writings


Table of Contents
William Allingham Sixteen Poems Selected by W. B. Yeats (1905)
Samuel Beckett
Plays

Worstword Ho (1983)

Waiting for Godot (1955) - in two .htm files

Novels

Waiting for Godot (1955) - as a single .pdf.
 
Endgame (1958)
Incidental Prose

Not I (1972)

“The Capital of the Ruins” (1946)
[ Note: Extensive extracts from the novels are to be found in Authors > Beckett > Quotations - supra. ]
George Birmingham
Barrington’s Recollections (1918 Edn.) - Intro.
Spanish Gold (1908)
Edmund Burke
Speeches
 

“Address to the British Colonists in North America” (1777)

 

Mr. Burke’s Speech at the Guildhall, in Bristol (1780)

Letters
 
Public letter(s)

“Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe on [...] Catholics of Ireland” (1792)

 
Private Letters

Letter to the Duke of Portland, September 14, 1794

Letter to the Rev. Dr. Hussey, February 4, 1795

Letter to Rev. Dr. Hussey, May 18, 1795

Letter to Thomas Keogh, Esq., November 17, 1796

Letter to the Rev. Dr. Hussey, Dec. 1796

Letter to the Right Hon. Wm. Windham, March 30, 1796

Letter to Dr. Laurence June 5, 1797

Major works
 

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

   
Letters, Speeches, and Tracts on Irish Affairs, ed. M. Arnold (1881)
 

Preface by Matthew Arnold & Table of Contents

 

Tracts Relative to the Laws Against Popery (1763)

William Carleton
—from Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (1830, & edns.)*
 

Introduction (1843 Edn.)
“Ned M’Keown”
“The Three Tasks”
“Shan Fadh’s Wedding”

“The Battle of the Factions”
“Lough Derg Pilgrim”
“The Hedgeschool”
“Wildgoose Lodge”

*chiefly taken from Colliers 1881 Edn. (NY 1881) - via Gutenberg.
Various collections
 

“Death of a Devotee”
“Condy Cullen and the Gauger”

“The Fate of Frank M’Kenna”
Novels

Fardorougha the Miser; or, The Convicts of Lishnamona (1839)

A copy of Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (1834 Dublin Edition) is available here in a separate window in pdf.

Note: Several prefaces of other works and longer extracts from the Autobiography, &c., are to be found under Carleton in the “Authors” region of this website.

T. Crofton Croker
Researches in the South of Ireland (1824)
Adventures of Barney Mahoney [actually by Mrs. Croker] (1832)
Notes on Letters of Thomas Moore to ... James Power (1854)
Maria Edgeworth
Castle Rackrent (1800)
“The Limerick Gloves” (in Popular Tales, 1804)
John Eglinton
Irish Literary Portraits (1935) available as .docx or .pdf
L. Winifred Faraday The Cattle Raid of Cooley [Tain Bo Cuailgne] (1904)
Samuel Ferguson “Head and Heart of an Irish Protestant” (DUM 1833)
Lady Gregory See separate index.
Gerald Griffin The Collegians, or A Tale of Garryowen (1829; 1918 Edn.)
Oliver Goldsmith
“The Deserted Village” (1770)
The Vicar of Wakefield (1776)
Seamus Heaney A Selection of the Poems (1/2)
Douglas Hyde “The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland” (1892)
Patrick Kavanagh
The Great Hunger (1942) Self-Portrait (1962)
Geoffrey Keating [Foras Feasa Ar Éirinn [The Grounddwork of Knowledge] (1902 Edn.)
Benedict Kiely Drink to the Bird (1991)
J. S. Le Fanu
Carmilla (1857) “Madam Crowl’s Ghost” (1870)
Uncle Silas (1864) “Green Tea” (1871)
George Farquhar The Beaux-Stratagem (1707)
James Joyce See separate index.
Thomas McCarthy
Poems  
  “The Dying Synagogue at South Terrace”, and “Moonlight Cooler, 1948”
  “State Funeral”,“Mr Nabokov’s Memory” and “Persephone, 1978”
Prose  
  ‘Why I Write’
John McGahern Amongst Women (1990)
Charles McGlinchey “The Fair at Pollan” by Denis O’Donnell, in The Last of the Name (1986) [Chap.7]
Louis MacNeice
A selection of poems ..
Bagpipe Music Birmingham The Brandy Glass British Museum RR
Carrickfergus The Drunkard Entirely I Am That I Am
Perseus Prayer Before Birth Prospect Refugees
The Strand Snow Stylite Thalassa
Sunday Morning Sunlight in the Garden ylphides Valediction
More poems ...  

‘Three Poems’

[“The Streets of Laredo”, “Slum Song” and “Carrick Revisited”]

‘Two Poems’

[“Schizophrene”, “Prayer Before Birth”]

‘War Poems’

[“Brother Fire”, “Whit Monday”, “Neutrality”, “Nostalgia”, “The Springboard”]

Note: The three sets of poems given above are copied from various issues of The Penguin New Writing (ed. John Lehmann) 1942, 1944 and 1946.

Charles Macklin The True-born Irishman; or, Irish Fine Lady (1762)
Deirdre Madden One by One in the Darkness (1996)
J. C. Mangan
Selection Poems …
“A Vision of Connaught in the 13th Century”
“Gone in the Wind”
“My Dark Rosaleen”
“The Lover’s Farewell”
“The Nameless One”
“Siberia”
“Lament for the Prince of Tir-Owen and Tirconnell”
“The Woman of the Three Cows”
“Hussey’s Ode to the Maguire”
“And Then No More”
Also ...
Translations from the Gaelic, sel. by Louise Guiney (1897)
C. R. Maturin
Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
“Leixlip Castle” (1825)
John Mitchel JailJournal [1854] (Dublin: Gill 1913) - “Introductory”
George Moore
Confessions of a Young Man (1886)
Drama in Muslin (1886; as Muslin, 1915 Edn.)
Esther Waters (1899)
The Untilled Field (1903)
I. In the Clay VIII. The Wedding-Gown
II. Some Parishioners IX. The Clerk’s Quest
III. The Exile X. ”Alms-giving”
IV. Home Sickness XI. So On He Fares
V. A Letter To Rome XII. The Wild Goose
VI. Julia Cahill’s Curse XIII. The Way Back
VII. A Playhouse in the Waste
Thomas Moore
The Loves of Angels (1823)
Memoirs of Captain Rock (1824) - extracts
Flann O’Brien
At Swim-Two-Birds (1939)
The Third Policeman (1967)
Sean O’Casey The Plough and the Stars (1926)
Kate O’Brien The Ante Room (1934)
Liam O’Flaherty
Novels (extracts)

Skerrett (1934)

Famine (1937)

Short fiction

“The Sniper” (1923)

Seamus O’Kelly The Weaver’s Grave
Sydney Owenson The Wild Irish Girl (1806)
Walter Pater Marius the Epicurean (1885)
Saint Patrick
“Confession of St. Patrick”
“Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus”
“The Life of St. Patrick” (by Muirchú)
“AE” Russell
[View on screen] [Download as .docx]
“Nationality and Imperialism” (1901) The National Being (1916) [full text]
“Open Letter to the Masters of Dublin (1913) Imagination and Reveries (1916)
The National Being (1916) [extracts] Collected Poems (1926)
  Letters from AE, ed. Denson (1962)
G. B. Shaw
John Bull’s Other Island (1904) [Preface & Sel. Text]
“What Protestants Think [about] Home Rule (1912)”
Somerville & Ross The Silver Fox (1897)
Edmund Spenser A View of the Present State of Ireland [1956]
Henry de Stacpoole The Blue Lagoon (1908)
Richard Stanihurst
De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis (1584)
De Vita S. Patricii (1587)
James Stephens
The Crock of Gold (1912) [also avaiable as .pdf and .doc]
The Charwoman’s Daughter (1912) [also available as .pdf and .doc]
Here Are Ladies (1913) [also available as .pdf and .doc]
Insurrection in Dublin (1916) [also available as .pdf and .doc]
Irish Fairy Tales (1920) [also available as .pdf and .doc]
James Joyce See separate index - infra.
Bram Stoker Dracula (1897)
Jonathan Swift
Prose    
An Argument [on] the Abolishing of Christianity (1708)
“The Art of Political Lying”, Examiner (9 Nov. 1710)
“Proposal for Correcting … the English Tongue” (1712)
 
The Drapier’s First Letter (1724)
Gulliver’s Travel (1726)
A Modest Proposal (1729)
The Drapier’s Fourth Letter (1725)
Short View of the State of Ireland (1727
Poetry    
“A Lady’s Dressing Room” (1732)
“Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift” (1739)
“On Dreams: An Imitation of Petronius”
J. M. Synge
Drama

Riders to the Sea (1905)

The Playboy of the Western World (1907) [another copy as .doc]
Prose

“Old & New (1907)”

The Aran Islands (1907)

Th. Wolfe Tone “An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland (1791)”
Oscar Wilde
Plays

An Ideal Husband (1895)

The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Prose

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

De Profundis (1905)

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

Poetry

“The Ballad of Reading Gaol” [1897]

“The Decay Of Lying” (1889)

“The Critic as Artist” (1890)

The Happy Prince & Other Stories (1888)

“The Happy Prince”

“The Nightingale and the Rose”

“The Selfish Giant”

“The Devoted Friend”

Others …

“The Fisherman and His Soul”

W. B. Yeats

See separate index - infra.



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