Biography and Criticism
A.M. Brady and Brian Cleeve (eds), Biographical Dictionary of Irish Writers (Lilliput o/p; St Martin's Press o/p). Succinct entries on all the greates, better used as a magical mystery tour through the lost byways of Irish literature. Anthony Cronin , Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist (Flamingo; Da Capo). Accessible, anecdotal biography, good on the Irish background. No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien (Fromn US). Witty and insightful biography, and particularly interesting on 1950s Dublin. Seamus Deane , Short History of Irish Literature (Hutchinson o/p; University of Notre Dame Press). Deane brings a poet's sensitivity to a massive and sometimes unwieldy tradition, with skill and a profound sense of sociopolitical context. See also his shorter analysis of modern writing in Irish Writers (Eason UK). Richard Ellmann , James Joyce (OUP US); Oscar Wilde (Penguin o/p). Ellman's Joyce is a major literary work in itself, a massive and brilliant book. His Oscar Wilde is at least its equal, an eloquent corrective to the image of Wilde as an intellectual mayfly. Roy Foster , W.B. Yeats - A Life - The Apprentice Mage , Volume One of two volumes (OUP). This is a superb biography - dispassionate, scholarly, and bound to augment your understanding of, though not necessarily your feelings for, the great man. Michael Holroyd , Bernard Shaw: A Biography (Chatto & Windus; Random House). Unfairly slammed by the critics, this is actually a pretty successful stab at understanding one of the most difficult and complex authors of the whole Anglo-Irish canon. Robert Kee , The Laurel & the lvy: The Story of Charles Stewart Parnell (Penguin). Illuminating account of the life and times of the great states-man by one of Ireland's most respected historians. Declan Kiberd , Inventing Ireland (Vintage; Harvard University Press). A massively scrupulous assessment of modern Irish literature from Yeats to Friel, set against a background of flux and turmoil. James Knowlson , Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (Bloomsbury o/p; Simon & Schuster). Stunning biography: thorough, balanced and scholarly. Brenda Maddox , Nora: A Biography of Nora Joyce (Minerva; Houghton Mifflin). Eminently readable story of the funny, irreverent and formidable Nora Barnacle and her life with James Joyce - an interesting complement of Ellmann's Joyce biography. Ulick O'Connor , Brendan Behan (Abacus UK). Moving account of the dramatist's life. Margaret Ward , Hannah Sheehy Skeffington: A Life (Cork University Press IRE). Fascinating, scholarly biography of a militant suffragist; co-founder of the Irish Women's Franchise League in 1908, Skeffingtion was one of the most important political activists of her day. Rober Welch (ed), Oxford Companion to Irish Literature (OUP). This encyclopedic tour through who's who and what they've written fills a long-standing need.
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