Eibhear Walshe

Brian Cliff

This book contains an interesting and diverse collection of essays that should appeal to the specialist and non-specialist alike. The authors analyze images of the Troubles in various media from theatre and film to murals and from to photography to literature.

Texts and Images, 1970-2000

Representing the Troubles

Gwenda Young

The 'Irish Big House' novelist, Molly Keane, was born in 1904, and in 2005 the Department of English at University College Cork will host an international conference. This book gathers these essays together to explore the writings of this important literary voice within twentieth-century Irish writing. Scholars of Irish literature from the US, Spain and Ireland presents perspectives on many aspects of her creative output, looking at a fascinating literary career which lasted from 1926 until 1993. This book draws together contemporary critical perspectives on this unique voice in Irish writing, the subversive voice of the Big House novelist charting the end of her class and the immanent collapse of a literary genre.

Essays in Contemporary Criticism

Molly Keane

Colm Toibin published his first book in 1985 and in the three decades since has been a central voice within popular Irish cultural and intellectual discourse. Toibin is one of the most widely-read and critically respected of Irish contemporary novelists, both in Europe and in North America, and his fictions have justly earned him an international reputation and an ever-growing popularity. His use of many literary forms; the newspaper essay, the travel book, the historical study, reviews, broadcasts, best-selling novels and short stories all attest to his crucial influence on Irish public discourse and Irish identity. Eibhear Walshe presents here the only complete study of Toibin's writing life to date, drawing on the newly-opened Colm Toibin literary archive.

The Writings of Colm Tóibín

A Different Story

Essays on Kate O'Brien

Ordinary People Dancing

Kate O'Brien (1897-1974) was one of the most important Irish writers of the twentieth century, widely read, accessible and popular in Britain, Ireland and the United States. She wrote for such respected literary journals as the Spectator, and the Irish Times; she broadcast regularly for the BBC and adapted her best-selling novels for the stage in London and on Broadway. One novel, That Lady, even became a Hollywood movie. She was a regular Book Club and Book Society choice, proof of her fame with the general reading public. In the course of a hugely productive writing life, Kate O'Brien travelled, lectured, produced novels, wrote literary essays, reviewed novels and was broadcast on the radio and on television. In this new biography by Eibhear Walshe, he traces her life from Limerick, to Spain, America London and argues that, in fact, Kate O'Brien was a subversive and a pioneer for women's writing. She created novels that were deceptively traditional in form but radical in content and thus invented a literary identity for her own Irish bourgeois class and a successfully realized fictive independence and viability for her young Irish female protagonists. Proud of her Irish middle-class origins, she was, nevertheless, antagonistic to the insular moral codes and the censorship laws of the newly emergent Irish state. Out of these contradictions, her fascinating and powerful novels were created and, as a result, her books still draw a wide readership. Drawing on original research and extensive archival sources, this biography traces the life and the writings of the most important novelist of the Irish middle class.Ã?Â?Ã?Â?

A Writing Life

Kate O'Brien

The Last Day at Bowen's Court deals with the life of the Irish novelist, Elizabeth Bowen, her time in London during the Second World War and her 'reporting' on Irish neutrality for the Ministry of Information. At the centre of the novel is her Blitz love affair with the Canadian diplomat, Charles Ritchie, a wartime romance that inspired her most famous novel, The Heat of the Day, a gripping story about espionage and loyalty that became a best-seller. The novel is told from the point of view of Bowen herself, and also from that of her lover Charles Ritchie, her husband Alan Cameron and Ritchie's wife Sylvia. It is set in wartime London, Dublin and North Cork, and deals with the private and public conflicts of love and of national identity in a time of upheaval and liberation. At the centre of the novel is a portrait of Elizabeth Bowen, one of Ireland's most influential writers.

The Last Day at Bowen's Court

Fintan O'Toole

Catherine Marshall

The Irish Times literary editor Fintan O'Toole selects 100 artworks to narrate a history of Ireland.

Eibhear Walshe

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