Ireland (Lonely Planet, 9th Edition) - Fionn Davenport [32]
Nuala O’Faolain (1940–2008), former opinion columnist for the Irish Times, ‘accidentally’ wrote an autobiography when a small publisher asked her to write an introduction to a collection of her columns. Her irreverent, humorous and touching prose struck a chord with readers and the essay was republished as Are You Somebody? (1996), followed by Almost There: The Onward Journey of a Dublin Woman (2003), which both became international bestsellers.
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Circle of Friends, by the queen of Irish popular fiction, Maeve Binchy, captures the often hilarious lives of two country girls in the 1940s who go to Dublin in search of romance.
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Ireland can boast four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature: George Bernard Shaw in 1925, WB Yeats in 1938, Samuel Beckett in 1969 and Seamus Heaney in 1995. The prestigious annual IMPAC awards, administered by Dublin City Public Libraries, accept nominations from public libraries around the world for works of high literary merit and offer a €100,000 award to the winning novelist. Previous winners have included David Malouf (Australian) and Nicola Barker (English).
Poetry
Ireland has always had a way with verse, none better than Nobel laureate WB Yeats (1865–1939), whose poetry far outshines his work as a playwright. His Love Poems, edited by Norman Jeffares, makes a suitable introduction for anyone new to his writing.
Three of the executed leaders of the Easter Rising – Pádraig Pearse (1879–1916), Joseph Plunkett (1879–1916) and Thomas McDonagh (1878–1916) – were noted poets, but while they (along with Yeats) evoked a vision of a greater Gaelic Ireland, the emerging poets of the latter half of the 20th century found their themes in the narrowness and frustrations of contemporary Irish life; this is best explored in the work of Patrick Kavanagh (1905–67), whose The Great Hunger and Tarry Flynn evoke the atmosphere and often grim realities of life for the poor farming community. You’ll find a bronze statue of him in Dublin, sitting beside his beloved Grand Canal (Click here).
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THE GAELIC REVIVAL
While Home Rule was being debated and shunted, something of a revolution was taking place in Irish arts, literature and identity. The poet William Butler Yeats and his coterie of literary friends (including Lady Gregory, Douglas Hyde, John Millington Synge and George Russell) championed the Anglo-Irish literary revival, unearthing old Celtic tales and writing with fresh enthusiasm about a romantic Ireland of epic battles and warrior queens. For a country that had suffered centuries of invasion and deprivation, these images presented a much more attractive version of history.
Similarly, Hyde and Eoin MacNeill did much to ensure the survival of the Irish language and the more everyday Irish customs and culture, which they believed to be central to Irish identity. They formed the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) in 1893, which, among other things, pushed for the teaching of Irish in schools. Meanwhile, the strongly politicised Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) promoted Irish sport and culture.
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Northern Ireland has unsurprisingly been a rich breeding ground for the poetic muse. Of a host of top-class poets who belong to the Northern School founded by John Hewitt (1907–87), the most renowned is Seamus Heaney (b 1939), Nobel Prize winner in 1995. His most recent collection is District and Circle (2006).
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Double Drink Story by Caitlin Thomas (née MacNamara), wife of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, is an eloquent, self-deprecating account of their debauched life, their love-hate relationship and the burden of creativity, making a brilliant literary memoir.
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Cork-born Irish-language poet Louis de Paor has twice won Ireland’s prestigious Sean O’Riordan Prize with collections of his poetry. Tom Paulin (b 1949) writes memorable poetry about the North (try The Strange Museum) as does Ciaran Carson (b 1948). Many of Paula Meehan’s (b 1955) magical,