Book description
This book includes all the leading Irish writers and some of the
lesser known: playwrights, novelists, short story writers, poets. It
places them in context and provides a list of their works.
Commentaries give brief but telling insights into their work. The
story of Irish writing is followed, beginning with Swift, and working
through playwrights Synge and O'Casey to Beckett and Friel; in novels,
from Maria Edgeworth, through Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Kate O'Brien,
Flann O'Brien to contemporaries Julia O'Faolain and Roddy Doyle; from
nineteenth-century poetry through Yeats to Paul Durcan.
Born in Dublin in 1920, he was educated at the High School, Dublin
and Trinity College, Dublin (of which he was an Honorary Fellow); he was
also a Research Fellow of Royal Holloway, University of London and of
Oriel College, Oxford. He taught in University College Dublin
(Classics); in Holland and Edinburgh (English) and held Chairs (English)
in Adelaide, Leeds and Stirling. He had travelled widely, lecturing on
Irish literature from the US to the USSR and in parts of Africa, the
Middle East, India and Europe. He was a member of the Order of
Australia, for services to Australian Literature, and gained honorary
degrees from the Universities of Lille, France and Ulster. Although
Prof. Jeffares' main interest was Irish Literature, he edited 24
Restoration comedies for the Folio Society and was considered an expert
on Walt Whitman. His main work has been on Yeats but he edited and wrote
on many Irish writers. His co-edited work includes The Poetry of Joyce
in Prose and Verse; Irish Childhoods; Ireland's Women and the
Gonne-Yeats Letters. Norman Jeffares founded IASIL (the International
Association for the Study of Irish Literature) and ACLCAS (Association
for the Study of Commonwealth Literature). In public life Norman
Jeffares was Vice-Chairman of the Scottish Arts Council; member, Arts
Council Great Britain; Vice President Royal Society of Edinburgh;
Chairman, Book Trust Scotland and was largely responsible as Chairman of
Literature, SAC, for getting the prestigious Edinburgh Book Festival
into being. He died in 2005.
