John Wilson Foster

Gerald Dawe

Ulster Literature and Society : Essays in Honour of John Hewitt, 1907-87

The Poet's Place

Between Shadows is a sequel to John Wilson Foster's acclaimed Colonial Consequences (1991) and, like its predecessor, is a widely-ranging encounter with modern Irish writers and modern Irish culture. Among the writers are Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, Trevor, and Barry. The wartime Ulster literary scene, Bloomsday, Irish nationalism, and the Great War are among the cultural episodes and phenomena the author engages with in this varied set of critical engagements.

Modern Irish Writing and Culture

Between Shadows

Statements and Critiques in Support of the Union of Great Britain & Northern Ireland

The Idea of the Union

Studies of Irish fiction are still scanty in contrast to studies of Irish poetry and drama. Attempting to fill a large critical vacancy, Irish Novels 1890-1940 is a comprehensive survey of popular and minor fiction (mainly novels) published between 1890 and 1922, a crucial period in Irish cultural and political history. Since the bulk of these sixty-odd writers have never been written about, certainly beyond brief mentions, the book opens up for further exploration a literary landscape, hitherto neglected, perhaps even unsuspected. This new landscape should alter the familiar perspectives on Irish literature of the period, first of all by adding genre fiction (science fiction, detective novels, ghost stories, New Woman fiction, and Great War novels) to the Irish syllabus, secondly by demonstrating the immense contribution of women writers to popular and mainstream Irish fiction. Among the popular and prolific female writers discussed are Mrs J.H. Riddell, B.M. Croker, M.E. Francis, Sarah Grand, Katharine Tynan, Ella MacMahon, Katherine Cecil Thurston, W.M. Letts, and Hannah Lynch. Indeed, a critical inference of the survey is that if there is a discernible tradition of the Irish novel, it is largely a female tradition. A substantial postscript surveys novels by Irish women between 1922 and1940 and relates them to the work of their female antecedents. This ground-breaking survey should also alter the familiar perspectives on the Ireland of 1890-1922. Many of the popular works were problem-novels and hence throw light on contemporary thinking and debate on the 'Irish Question'. After the Irish Literary Revival and creation of the Free State, much popular and mainstream fiction became a lost archive, neglected evidence, indeed, of a lost Ireland.

New Bearings in Culture and Fiction

Irish Novels 1890-1940

This is a critical survey of the fiction and non-fiction written in Ireland during the key years between 1880 and 1920, or what has become known as the Irish Literary Renaissance. The book considers both the prose and the social and cultural forces working through it.

A Changeling Art

Fictions of the Irish Literary Revival

This is the perfect overview of the Irish novel from the seventeenth century to the present day.

John Wilson Foster

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