Seán O’Casey Book order

Looks at Sean O'Casey's young (pre-writing) life that takes shape amid the extraordinary tumult of Ireland in the early twentieth century, thus leading him into the fray of the Easter Rising of 1916.

Focusing on the Irish Citizen Army's formation during the Dublin strike of 1913-1914, the author, a key participant in the movement, provides a vigorous account of labor's influence in Ireland. He offers a strong perspective on the workers' relationship with the Nationalist movement. The book features character portraits of notable figures such as Larkin, Connolly, and the Countess Markiewicz, while revealing previously unknown details about the interactions between the Citizen Army and the Volunteers.

The Shadow of a Gunman is a play set during the Irish War of Independence. It centres on a building tenant who is mistaken for an IRA assassin.

In his early forties, while continuing to support himself as a laborer, we wrote, in quick succession three realistic plays about the slums of Dublin, known as the Dublin Trilogy." Juno and the Paycock," the second installment of the trilogy, was performed in the Abbey Theatre in 1924--the Abbey theatre produced the first installment of the trilogy, "The Shadow of a Gunman" (not included in this volume) in 1923." Juno and the Paycock "deals with the unpleasantness of war and the misery of the victims during the the Irish struggle for indepenence. It was awarded the Hawthornden Prize. As his career progressed, O'Casey experiemented with expressionism and symbolism, which resulted in "Within the Gates;" "Red Roses for Me," a semiautobiographical work; and "Cock-a-Doodle Dandy," Due to an increase of nationalism during the Civil War and Irish Independence movement, his plays were received well, although, at times, with protest and restriction.

This volume contains the three plays commonly recognized as the height of O'Casey's achievement as a playwright. His tragi-comedy has relevance to the violent politics in the North and the post-nationalist bewilderments in the Republic.

The most famous play by this remarkable Irish dramatist. Juno and the Paycock has been produced throughout the world and offers a compelling look at the family conflicts of struggling Irish matriarch Juno Boyle's Herculean attempts to keep her children safe and her husband "Captain" Jack Boyle sober despite his foolish schemes and the ongoing "troubles" in early 20th century Dublin.

A murderer becomes the toast of the village as his charm negates his crime. A young countess saves her tenants from starvation, but only by selling her soul to the Devil. The sleepy parish of Nyadnanave sees a vision of a cockerel that dares the inhabitants to break the shackles of Church and State. All these plays were met with moral outrage and rioting in their native Ireland.Yeats's 'The Countess Cathleen' (1892), J. M. Synge's 'The Playboy of the Western World' (1907) and O'Casey's 'Cock-a-doodle Dandy' (1949) emerged from a period of traumatic change for Ireland. While the plays bear witness to the immmense social upheavals of the turn of the twentieth century, they also represent a new age of Irish drama that rose from the turmoil, and their lessons ring true to this day.

A play set in the tenements of Dublin in 1922, just after the outbreak of the Irish Civil War, revolving around the misfortunes of the dysfunctional Boyle family ("Juno and the paycock"). A tragicomedy set during the Irish War of Independence centering on the mistaken identity of a building tenant who is thought to be an IRA assassin ("The shadow of a gunman"). A play set in Dublin addressing the 1916 Easter Rising ("The plough and the stars")