Irish-American Books

Growing up in the South, I always looked at the Civil War from the eyes of a Southerner. Thorp has succeeded in moving me beyond North or South to a place where the historical human drama is much greater than one side, indeed greater than a Confederacy or a Union, for it is the essence of a Country. All the characters, with the exception of a few, are real people who actually lived and fought and died in the tragic War Between the States. The men and women of Thorp's novel are people with personalities and families and hopes and fears, just as all of us. I highly recommend this book.

As a lifelong resident of Frankford & board member of the Historical Society of Frankford I can vouch for the fact that all sites & characters in the book except for the Mulcahy family existed. The regiments & the fate of the men who served in them follows fact. Doctor Thorp has brought to life the section of Philadelphia know as Frankford as it was in the 1860s.

This is an absolutely great book and it's too bad it's out of print and nobody seems to have read it! I have been listening to the audio tape in the car. The reader is a little over-dramatic in places...like he makes a walk down the street sound as breathless and ominous as a murder scene...but on the whole, he's excellent, too. It has mystery, wit, excitement, suspense! And Oscar Wilde to boot. It's completely captivating...bring it back!

This was the best bit of historical fiction I have ever read. I can't believe it's out of print. In an attempt to boost his income, Oscar Wilde tours on a lecture/performance circuit across the USA. Unfortunately, as his retinue crosses the West, dead prostitutes start appearing in ever city he and his entourage visit. He becomes a prime suspect, and attempts to solve the mystery himelf with, as he puts it, "...a systematic application of the poetic imagination." It is a wonderful story, with all the elements of great Old West Literature, including horses, trains, gunfights, Doc Holladay, a little sex, and a herd of goats.

Lansverk does an impressive job investigating and explaining the formidable works of the enigmatic William Blake. Lansverk's writing is clear, well organized, and insightful. This is the place to start if you are interested in Blake criticism or would like to understand his works more deeply.

This is the best book on Blake that I have read bar none. For an all around introduction to the prophetic language of this Romantic poet, there is no better source. More readable than Frye. More profound than Hilton. Makes a great Christmas gift for any Blake fans on your list.

"The Wordsworth Companion to Literature in English" as edited by Ian Ousby does what most average readers need: brings us into the know about literature without requiring a PhD.

It is cleanly edited, with a succinct but not crowded design. There are no pictures to augment the entries, but this was no a barrier to understanding what is presented.

The average reader will never read it all. We go to our desk jobs, and sneak in a few pages here and there. However, there is a range of topics we wish we knew more about as we read.

Look up terms like "Dubliners" and you can learn in brief about James Joyce's classic 1914 volume of short stories. Look up "Hopkins," and see Gerard Manley Hopkins, the humble yet profound Catholic priest whose poetic style helped influence today's metrical forms.

In one entry, you might see a term in bold, letting you know an entry exists for that one.

Find "The Southern Literary Messenger," a magazine best known for publishing Edgar Allan Poe (he was also editor from 1835-1837), and discover its overall history, from 1834-1864. There is just one paragraph, which, for me, is enough.

Packed with names, titles, and styles, what it is missing are famous characters. Where's Juliet? Where's Sherlock Holmes? Where's the Artful Dodger?

Beyond my criticism of the character entries (or lack of), I am pleased with the book. Read it in entirety, and you can confidently dash off into lucid conversations that will impress any of your grad school friends.

I fully recommend "The Wordsworth Companion to Literature in English" as edited by Ian Ousby.

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

This is a remarkably useful book -- an encyclopedic 1036 pages chock full of a wide range of entries relating to English language and literature. I purchased it for a song about a decade ago and have found it to be an invaluable resource. The book comprises mostly entries by authors or titles, but many other important topics are included, e.g., psychoanalytic criticism, irony, stream of consciousness, metre, Aesthetic Movement, and courtly love, to name but a few. Many lesser known authors and their works are included; all author entries contain succinct biographical data. Given the small print, there is quite a mountain of information contained in the pages of this volume. The entries are concise, exceptionally well written, and reflect the considerable learning of the book's contributors, 106 of whom are listed at the beginning. Time and again I have come to this book for an answer about something pertaining to English literature, and rarely have I been disappointed. I have not seen anything as good of its kind on the shelves of any bookstore.

Morgan has once again used her background as a historical researcher combined with an easy flowing style to give the most succint encapsulation of at least 100 books, covering several genres. Better than reading a review in the New York Times. It almost allows you to talk as if you have read the whole story without having to do so. It provides insights about many of the authors, that provides a colorful background tapestry, that makes you want to rush right out and read all of the books she has reviewed.

Of course, I am speaking in my title of the pure anthology, a collection without explanatory or exploratory texts. And that is all this is: a collection of poems by 100 poets. But do not misread "all this is": "a collection" is all this book _needs_ be, and it is that quite exemplarily.

Now, no poetry anthology that is not 5000+ pages in length is going to leave you without any sense of "Oh, they really should have included such-and-such," and this anthology is not exempt. Of course, there are poems and poets that I think would work better than others included toward expanding representation and variation without thinning out the collection. And there are some contemporary poets that Gioia includes that I see little reason behind beside their being popular to someone. And there are contemporary (or late 20th century) poets not included that I believe would have done the anthology well as examples of the art. But as a broad anthology, this exceeds my expectations. Most of the major names are included, and there is enough offered to give a decent sampling of their artistic identities. As well, there is enough breadth to offer examples that would contribute to most any discussion about poetry and poetics. It would be an easy thing to teach poetry simply by opening this book, and exploring what you find.

As someone who has become rather despondant about the abundance of poorly conceived and executed anthologies out there, this one has pleased me (and is pleasing me) to no end. A well put together collection, and worthy of any classroom -- not to mention an excellent sampling of poetry for any curious reader.

I prefer the print version of the MLA bibliography to the online as it's easier to manipulate physical pages than to slog around through slow hypertext links. Though the CD version offered by Silver Platter is excellent, it lacks access to a fully collated, alphabetized subject index. Volume 1, the most consistent and frequently consulted of 5 volumes is an excellent tool for those who wish to specialize in the literature end of the hyper-interdiscplinary miasma into which English and American Studies have increasingly ventured since the late 1980s --not that there's anything wrong with that. Volume 1, however, is the single best tool for remaining focused on one's quest to build or maintain a career as a teacher of English language literature --a vanishing creature in the sprawling mall/moll-ifying of literary studies amid its apparently irreversible stratification. (thank you for reading my runaway sentence)
Research among one's peers, within a defined realm is what makes great teachers, especially if they build their philosophical foundation without relying on the pre-set theories of big name postformalists.
Sadly, scholars, PhD and Masters candidates won't be taken seriously in their field if they don't religiously consult the MLA bibliography in its 5 volume entirety.
Dropping all ideological pretentions and defending the 5 tiered print bibliography, it's ultimately good --and necessary-- to branch out. Since the arrangement and weighting of topics from year to year in the printed subject index gets lost in the electronic versions, it's helpful to have (access to) copies of the 4 or 5 most recent print versions to properly scale your work within the visible arrangement of critical trends. Yes, to sell out and, at least temporarily &/or secretly join the ranks of the publish and perish set, taking care to avoid the addiction to theory that accelerates the latter effect.
Though costly and bulky, I can't recommend having the print tomes --or ready access to them-- enough. The brilliance of the anonymous compilers of this amazing and essential research tool is mind boggling. If you want to accelerate your research or push to the forefront of your specialty --recognized as such or not, you need access to these gems of literary metaresearch. In a perfect world, it would be sufficient to rely on one's education, intellectual curiosity and imagination to produce scholarship worthy of the classics, but in this reality, there is no better tool with which to reserve a shoulder ride on the giant of the moment. You need this.

This book is a patchwork of recollection, snippet size in most cases, that combines to form a vibrant quilt portraying the fabric that was the lives of the US airmen of the 8th Air Force in combat and in daily contact with the *friendly - yet foreign* English countrymen and women. Instead of a history telling of targets attacked and planes lost, it offers a personal recollection of the 8th AF airmen's war years, in quips and quotes, in terms of adopted english families, english lads, lasses, and the sights of London; of trains, planes and lorries; of the fears of flying combat; of sweating out the return of your guys; of the job that had to be done. Very Well Done!

"The title 'After Easter' owes as much to Yeat's poem 'Easter 1916' as to George Steiner's book 'After Babel, After Easter'," says Anne Devlin. The title of the play can be interpreted in many ways and although Devlin herself attributes it to the titles above we can see clearly that it has large significance in relation to the action of the play. The play begins just before Easter 1996 when Greta, the main character, goes on a journey to discover her own identity. She is searching throughout Easter but the fulfilment of her quest does not come until after Easter when we see her in the final scene.

As the play moves on we see Greta is not along in her insecurity as 'After Easter' is about much more than one woman and her search for security, love and the understanding of her own identity. Devlin portrays the dysfunctional Flynn family's struggle for their own separate and true identities. In the play we learn a lot about each of the characters, especially the three sisters and it is interesting to see how each family member copes with the problems that they are faced with and the transformations that they go through during the course of the week in which the play is set.

Although Devlin claims "it is not a political play, it is a psychological play", the issues raised are clealy not just psychological. Although the main story revolves around Greta's 'insanity' and looks at what the contrasting characters regard as 'right' and 'wrong' in the main aspects of religion, love and death, the problems of Northern Ireland play a large part in moving the story along and initiating situations that reveal much about the individuals.

'After Easter' is not a play which clearly states its purpose or meaning. It will mean something different to everyone, but what somebody directing this play should try to do is simply enhance the points which they think are most important to Greta's development. You can choose to focus on the Northern Ireland problem, the idea of 'banshees', the religion, the family, the politics or the 'insanity'. However, I feel that the different issues are equally important and that Devlin intends you to explore the conflict between them.

'After Easter' is an exellent play and as The Observer wrote: "Anne Devlin's marvelous new play is rich, dense and poetic, beautifully written and very funny", I would have to agree!

In an age of evocative names like Eric Bloodaxe and Egil Skallagrimson, one name has been lost in the mists of time: that of Athelstan, ruler of all Britian. From the first raids of the Vikings on the shores of Britian and Ireland, the book traces the response to the threat across the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic worlds. The rise of the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons, and later of the English, built from the debris of Viking destruction, is analysed in detail and compared to the struggle for independence in Northumbria.
Athelstan's achievement in establishing an empire for which he became famous is a key focus of the tale, along with the extradornary history of the hunt for the lost battle of Brunanburh (AD 937), a clash which defined a people. For hundreds of years, no king would rule as much of Britian as Athelstan. His reputation survived the medieval period in the form of histories, songs and poems only to be lost at a later date, and yet its essence can still be found today all over the country.
Paul Hill was formerly curator at Kingston Museum where Athelstan was crowned. He has appeared on Britian's Channel 5's Battlefield Detectives series in 'Bloodbath at Hastings" as an Anglo-Saxon military specalist.

Recommended!