Irish category: 5415 books

According to the Preface: "Fanny's First Play, being but a potboiler, needs no preface. But its lesson is not, I am sorry to say, unneeded. Mere morality, or the substitution of custom for conscience was once accounted a shameful and cynical thing: people talked of right and wrong, of honor and dishonor,...

In this fifth poetry collection, Northern Irish poet Peter McDonald explores the haunting persistence of memories and the acts of remembrance that preserve and shape them. From Belfast in the troubled 1970s to contemporary England, from ancient myth to rock music, and from personal recollections to...

The great Irish playwright’s impassioned dramatization of the life and trial of Joan of Arc. Three years after Joan of Arc was canonized in 1920, George Bernard Shaw brought to the stage a more complex and human portrayal of the fifteenth-century French martyr, creating one of the theater’s...

An uplifting, bittersweet drama set in a nursing home, celebrating friendship and the human spirit. A nursing-home conservatory. Sean sits alone, abandoned to his memories. In storms Patricia, a feisty woman with a zest for life and for handsome men in wheelchairs. A wary intimacy develops...

George Bernard Shaw was a prolific Irish playwright who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1925.  Shaw’s famous plays include Man and Superman and Pygmalion which was adapted into the classic musical My Fair Lady.  This edition of You Never Can Tell includes a table of contents.

George Bernard Shaw was a prolific Irish playwright who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1925.  Shaw’s famous plays include Man and Superman and Pygmalion which was adapted into the classic musical My Fair Lady.  This edition of Captain Brassbound’s Conversion includes a table of contents.

Originally written in the 1970s but resonating with relevance today, this lively tragi-comedy by an award winning Irish playwright reveals what it is to be old and vulnerable, frail but feisty. In a dreary, seaside care-home in 1970s Ireland, Eve and Francis's spirited friendship has made life...

“Grief fills the room up of my absent child.” (William Shakespeare, King John, Act III scene iv) Irish theatre collective Dead Centre’s new solo work for an eleven-year-old boy is devoted to Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet, who died in 1596 at the age of eleven. His father, the famous poet...

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1815) was an Irish poet and social activist. For a long period of time he was the owner of the London Theatre Royal. His most famous literary works are ‘The Rivals’, ‘The School for Scandal’ and ‘The Duenna’. Richard Sheridan was elected a member of the...

In Autumn 2011 Fishamble: The New Play Company, in partnership with The Irish Times, launched Tiny Plays for Ireland, commissioning short works by some of Ireland's best-loved writers and calling for submissions of tiny dramas from the public. There was an overwhelming response, with over 1,700 submissions...

Spiritual orphanhood, the loss and protection of innocence – from the first estates of Dublin to the karmic wastes of northern China – lie at the heart of this new collection by the eminent Irish poet Harry Clifton. Herod’s Dispensations shows his work now reaching beyond middle age, to revisit...

From the first estates of Dublin to the karmic wastes of northern China, this new volume by the eminent Irish poet Harry Clifton charts a course through the spiritual orphanhood, the loss and protection of innocence that define our new nomadic age. The poet has moved beyond middle age to revisit,...

The Day family are Irish country-music royalty and Irene is their queen. Her relatives are completely dependent on her success. But as Irene's star fades, the Days are facing financial destruction. When the heir to her musical throne, Jackie Day, returns from the States with a new girlfriend,...

I love Mozart’s music for the Magic Flute, but I’ve never been convinced by the libretto, which was written for him by Schikaneder. I can understand the Free Mason background to the script, but there are too many loose ends. For instance: who - or why - was the “Queen of the Night”? Why was...