Seamus Deane Books

The Irish Heritage 57 Published to mark the Centenary of Eason and Son Limited

A survey of 200 years of Irish writing, this book offers analytic accounts of key Irish works and authors.

Seamus Deane, one of Ireland's most important critics, assesses here the place of literature in "a colonial or neo-colonial culture like ours, where the naming of the territory has always been ... a politically charged act." The force of Deane's A Short History of Irish Literature derives precisely from his naming of the territory. With insight, erudition, and a razor-keen style, he locates Irish writers within the island's traumatic history. His aim is to show how literature has been inescapably allied with historical interpretation and with political allegiance.

The book examines the development of a distinct national tradition in Irish literature, beginning with the impact of Edmund Burke's writings during the French Revolution. It explores key works from authors like Gerald Griffin, Bram Stoker, and James Joyce, highlighting themes of national identity, conflict, and the tension between modernity and tradition. The narrative reveals how Irish print culture, encompassing novels, songs, and poems, navigates the complexities of its colonial legacy, ultimately leading to a deeper understanding of Ireland’s literary achievements.

A collection of six plays by Irish playwright Brian Friel.

The story is told from the point of view of an unnamed young Irish Catholic boy living in a poor area of Derry. This novel-in-stories is about both the boy's coming of age and the Troubles of Northern Ireland, from the partition of the island in the early 1920s until July 1971, just after the violent Battle of the Bogside took place in Derry. The setting mirrors mid-twentieth century Derry leading into the Troubles. While the narrator is surrounded with violence, chaos, and sectarian division, Derry serves as the place where he grows up, both physically and mentally. Despite the surrounding events, the narrator's tone never slips into complete despair, but maintains a sense of hope and humour throughout.

The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce and a universal testament to the artist's 'eternal imagination'. Both an insight into Joyce's life and childhood, and a unique work of modernist fiction, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a novel of sexual awakening, religious rebellion and the essential search for voice and meaning that every nascent artist must face in order to fully come into themselves.