125-495: Irish PEN Award for Literature is an annual literary award presented by Irish PEN since 1999. Its intent is to honour an Irish-born writer who has made an outstanding contribution to Irish literature . The award is for a significant body of work and is open to novelists, playwrights, poets, and scriptwriters. In 2012, the award was presented to novelist Joseph O'Connor by the President of Ireland , Michael D. Higgins . The award
250-539: A comedy about an Englishman in Ireland, attracted leading politicians and was seen by Edward VII , who laughed so much that he broke his chair. The play was withheld from Dublin's Abbey Theatre , for fear of the affront it might provoke, although it was shown at the city's Royal Theatre in November 1907. Shaw later wrote that William Butler Yeats , who had requested the play, "got rather more than he bargained for ... It
375-473: A contributor, mostly anonymously. He was soon at odds with the magazine's editor, Clifford Sharp , who by 1916 was rejecting his contributions—"the only paper in the world that refuses to print anything by me", according to Shaw. "I see the Junkers and Militarists of England and Germany jumping at the chance they have longed for in vain for many years of smashing one another and establishing their own oligarchy as
500-519: A federal arrangement, with national and imperial parliaments. Holroyd records that by this time the separatist party Sinn Féin was in the ascendency, and Shaw's and other moderate schemes were forgotten. In the postwar period, Shaw despaired of the British government's coercive policies towards Ireland, and joined his fellow-writers Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton in publicly condemning these actions. The Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921 led to
625-669: A fine orator. "The most striking result of our present system of farming out the national Land and capital to private individuals has been the division of society into hostile classes, with large appetites and no dinners at one extreme, and large dinners and no appetites at the other" From 1885 to 1889 Shaw attended the fortnightly meetings of the British Economic Association ; it was, Holroyd observes, "the closest Shaw had ever come to university education". This experience changed his political ideas; he moved away from Marxism and became an apostle of gradualism . When in 1886–87
750-454: A flamboyant figure well known in Dublin's musical circles. Shaw retained a lifelong obsession that Lee might have been his biological father; there is no consensus among Shavian scholars on the likelihood of this. The young Shaw suffered no harshness from his mother, but he later recalled that her indifference and lack of affection hurt him deeply. He found solace in the music that abounded in
875-697: A genial farce, was granted a licence; it opened at the Royal Court in January 1917. Shaw had long supported the principle of Irish Home Rule within the British Empire (which he thought should become the British Commonwealth). In April 1916 he wrote scathingly in The New York Times about militant Irish nationalism: "In point of learning nothing and forgetting nothing these fellow-patriots of mine leave
1000-467: A house in the country, Shaw, concerned that this might cause scandal, agreed to their marriage. The ceremony took place on 1 June 1898, in the register office in Covent Garden . The bride and bridegroom were both aged forty-one. In the view of the biographer and critic St John Ervine , "their life together was entirely felicitous". There were no children of the marriage, which it is generally believed
1125-451: A large amount of prose fiction, wrote a number of important plays, including Waiting for Godot . Several Irish writers have excelled at short story writing, in particular Edna O'Brien , Frank O'Connor , Lord Dunsany and William Trevor . Other notable Irish writers from the twentieth century include poets Eavan Boland and Patrick Kavanagh , dramatists Tom Murphy and Brian Friel , and novelists Edna O'Brien and John McGahern . In
1250-467: A less ambiguous foundation for an Anglo-Irish literary tradition. Though not of Irish birth, she came to live there when young and closely identified with Ireland. She was a pioneer in the realist novel . Other Irish novelists to emerge during the 19th century include John Banim , Gerald Griffin , Charles Kickham and William Carleton . Their works tended to reflect the views of the middle class or gentry and they wrote what came to be termed "novels of
1375-1364: A new energy, marked by the Gaelic Revival (which encouraged a modern literature in Irish) and more generally by the Irish Literary Revival . What is often termed the Anglo-Irish literary tradition although many if not most of these authors are of Irish ethnicity, not English, in some cases they have both ancestries such as Sheridan. Irish-English literature found its first great exponents in Richard Head and Jonathan Swift , followed by Laurence Sterne , Oliver Goldsmith , and Richard Brinsley Sheridan . Other Irish writers in English include Mary Tighe , Thady Connellan , Arthur Murphy , John O'Keeffe , Nicholas Brady , Sydney, Lady Morgan , Edmond Malone , Hugh Kelly , Matthew Concanen , Anne Donnellan , Samuel Madden , Henry Brooke (writer) , Mary Barber (poet) and Thomas Dermody . The descendants of Scottish settlers in Ulster maintained an Ulster-Scots writing tradition, having an especially strong tradition of rhyming poetry. At
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#17331069106301500-684: A nominated Fabian delegate, he did not attend the London conference at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street in February 1900, that created the Labour Representation Committee —precursor of the modern Labour Party . By 1903, when his term as borough councillor expired, he had lost his earlier enthusiasm, writing: "After six years of Borough Councilling I am convinced that the borough councils should be abolished". Nevertheless, in 1904 he stood in
1625-1113: A part of. It is thus not unusual to find poetry from the Old Irish period in a tale written in Middle Irish. While these four cycles are common to readers today they are the invention of modern scholars. There are several tales which do not fit neatly into one category, or not into any category at all. Early Irish writers though of tales in terms of genre's such as Aided (Death-tales), Aislinge (Visions), Cath (Battle-tales), Echtra (Adventures), Immram (Voyages), Táin Bó (Cattle Raids), Tochmarc (Wooings) and Togail (Destructions). As well as Irish mythology there were also adaptations into Middle Irish of Classical mythological tales such as Togail Troí (The Destruction of Troy , adapted from Daretis Phrygii de excidio Trojae historia , purportedly by Dares Phrygius ), Togail na Tebe (The Destruction of Thebes , from Statius ' Thebaid ) and Imtheachta Æniasa (from Virgil 's Aeneid ). The 17th century saw
1750-576: A perfectly constitutional manner by democratic institutions". The mid-1880s marked a turning point in Shaw's life, both personally and professionally: he lost his virginity, had two novels published, and began a career as a critic. He had been celibate until his twenty-ninth birthday, when his shyness was overcome by Jane (Jenny) Patterson, a widow some years his senior. Their affair continued, not always smoothly, for eight years. Shaw's sex life has caused much speculation and debate among his biographers, but there
1875-427: A personal nature. Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh (14th century), Tadhg Óg Ó hUiginn (15th century) and Eochaidh Ó hEoghusa (16th century) were among the most distinguished of these poets. Every noble family possessed a body of manuscripts containing genealogical and other material, and the work of the best poets was used for teaching purposes in the bardic schools. In this hierarchical society, fully trained poets belonged to
2000-447: A schoolboy left him disillusioned with formal education: "Schools and schoolmasters", he later wrote, were "prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents." In October 1871 he left school to become a junior clerk in a Dublin firm of land agents , where he worked hard, and quickly rose to become head cashier. During this period, Shaw was known as "George Shaw"; after 1876, he dropped
2125-424: A sensitive boy, found the less salubrious parts of Dublin shocking and distressing, and was happier at the cottage. Lee's students often gave him books, which the young Shaw read avidly; thus, as well as gaining a thorough musical knowledge of choral and operatic works, he became familiar with a wide spectrum of literature. Between 1865 and 1871 Shaw attended four schools, all of which he hated. His experiences as
2250-410: A teenage ambition to become a painter, and had not yet thought of writing for a living, but Lee found a little work for him, ghost-writing a musical column printed under Lee's name in a satirical weekly, The Hornet . Lee's relations with Bessie deteriorated after their move to London. Shaw maintained contact with Lee, who found him work as a rehearsal pianist and occasional singer. Eventually Shaw
2375-470: A tract, Why Are The Many Poor? , issued by the recently formed Fabian Society , Shaw went to the society's next advertised meeting, on 16 May 1884. He became a member in September, and before the year's end had provided the society with its first manifesto, published as Fabian Tract No. 2. He joined the society's executive committee in January 1885, and later that year recruited Webb and also Annie Besant ,
2500-405: A tyrannical great-aunt. If, as Holroyd and others surmise, George's motives were mercenary, then he was disappointed, as Bessie brought him little of her family's money. She came to despise her ineffectual and often drunken husband, with whom she shared what their son later described as a life of "shabby-genteel poverty". By the time of Shaw's birth his mother had become close to George John Lee,
2625-609: A venture was contrary to the specified purpose of the legacy. He was eventually persuaded to support the proposal, and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) opened in the summer of 1895. By the later 1890s Shaw's political activities lessened as he concentrated on making his name as a dramatist. In 1897 he was persuaded to fill an uncontested vacancy for a "vestryman" ( parish councillor ) in London's St Pancras district. At least initially, Shaw took to his municipal responsibilities seriously; when London government
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#17331069106302750-490: A writer in English, also published a book of short stories in Irish ( Dúil ). Irish-language literature has maintained its vitality into the 21st century. Most attention has been given to Irish writers who wrote in English and who were at the forefront of the modernist movement, notably James Joyce , whose novel Ulysses is considered one of the most influential works of the century. The playwright Samuel Beckett , in addition to
2875-462: Is Cúirt an Mheán Oíche (The Midnight Court), a vigorous and inventive satire by Brian Merriman from County Clare . The copying of manuscripts continued unabated. One such collection was in the possession of Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin , a teacher and linen draper of County Kilkenny who kept a unique diary in vernacular Irish from 1827 to 1835 covering local and international events, with a wealth of information about daily life. The Great Famine of
3000-521: Is one of many PEN awards sponsored by PEN affiliates in over 145 PEN centres around the world. Irish literature Irish literature is literature written in the Irish , Latin , English and Scots ( Ulster Scots ) languages on the island of Ireland . The earliest recorded Irish writing dates from back in the 7th century and was produced by monks writing in both Latin and Early Irish, including religious texts, poetry and mythological tales. There
3125-504: Is a 9th-century illuminated manuscript written mainly in Latin, containing early texts relating to St Patrick and some of the oldest surviving specimens of Old Irish . It is one of the earliest manuscripts produced by an insular church to contain a near complete copy of the New Testament. The manuscript was the work of a scribe named Ferdomnach of Armagh (died 845 or 846). Ferdomnach wrote
3250-562: Is a consensus that the relationship with Patterson was one of his few non-platonic romantic liaisons. The published novels, neither commercially successful, were his two final efforts in this genre: Cashel Byron's Profession written in 1882–83, and An Unsocial Socialist , begun and finished in 1883. The latter was published as a serial in To-Day magazine in 1884, although it did not appear in book form until 1887. Cashel Byron appeared in magazine and book form in 1886. In 1884 and 1885, through
3375-451: Is a large surviving body of Irish mythological writing , including tales such as The Táin and Mad King Sweeny . The English language was introduced to Ireland in the 13th century, following the Norman invasion of Ireland . The 16th and 17th centuries saw a major expansion of English power across Ireland, further expanding the presence of early Modern English speakers. One theory is that in
3500-526: Is the Historical Cycle , or Cycle of the Kings. The Historical Cycle ranges from the almost entirely mythological Labraid Loingsech , who allegedly became High King of Ireland around 431 BC, to the entirely historical Brian Boru , who reigned as High King of Ireland in the eleventh century AD. The Historical Cycle includes the late medieval tale Buile Shuibhne ( The Frenzy of Sweeney ), which has influenced
3625-569: The First World War as equally culpable, and although not a republican , castigated British policy on Ireland in the postwar period. These stances had no lasting effect on his standing or productivity as a dramatist; the inter-war years saw a series of often ambitious plays, which achieved varying degrees of popular success. In 1938 he provided the screenplay for a filmed version of Pygmalion for which he received an Academy Award . His appetite for politics and controversy remained undiminished; by
3750-549: The Gael ,". Other recurring characters include Cú Chulainn , a figure comparable to the Greek hero Achilles , known for his terrifying battle frenzy, or ríastrad , Fergus and Conall Cernach . Emain Macha and Cruachan are the chief locations. The cycle is set around the end of the 1st century BC and the beginning of the 1st century AD, with the death of Conchobar being set at the same day as
3875-452: The Hill of Tara is a common location. Unusually among European epic cycles, the Irish sagas were written in prosimetrum , i.e. prose, with verse interpolations expressing heightened emotion. Although usually found in manuscripts of later periods, many of these works contain language that predates the surviving records, and some of the poetry is significantly older than the complete tales they form
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4000-522: The Irish Literary Revival , including George Russell and James Joyce , and was a close friend of Seán O'Casey , who was inspired to become a playwright after reading John Bull's Other Island . Man and Superman , completed in 1902, was a success both at the Royal Court in 1905 and in Robert Loraine 's New York production in the same year. Among the other Shaw works presented by Vedrenne and Granville-Barker were Major Barbara (1905), depicting
4125-523: The London County Council elections. After an eccentric campaign, which Holroyd characterises as "[making] absolutely certain of not getting in", he was duly defeated. It was Shaw's final foray into electoral politics. Nationally, the 1906 general election produced a huge Liberal majority and an intake of 29 Labour members. Shaw viewed this outcome with scepticism; he had a low opinion of the new prime minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman , and saw
4250-598: The Social Democratic Federation (SDF), where he discovered the writings of Karl Marx , and thereafter spent much of 1883 reading Das Kapital . He was not impressed by the SDF's founder, H. M. Hyndman , whom he found autocratic, ill-tempered and lacking leadership qualities. Shaw doubted the ability of the SDF to harness the working classes into an effective radical movement and did not join it—he preferred, he said, to work with his intellectual equals. After reading
4375-588: The partition of Ireland between north and south, a provision that dismayed Shaw. In 1922 civil war broke out in the south between its pro-treaty and anti-treaty factions, the former of whom had established the Irish Free State . Shaw visited Dublin in August, and met Michael Collins , then head of the Free State's Provisional Government . Shaw was much impressed by Collins, and was saddened when, three days later,
4500-456: The rhyming weavers were James Campbell (1758–1818), James Orr (1770–1816), Thomas Beggs (1749–1847). In the 19th century English was well on the way to becoming the dominant vernacular. Down until the Great Famine of the 1840s, however, and even later, Irish was still used over large areas of the south-west, the west and the north-west. A famous long poem from the beginning of the century
4625-400: The "George" and styled himself "Bernard Shaw". In June 1873 Lee left Dublin for London and never returned. A fortnight later, Bessie followed him; the two girls joined her. Shaw's explanation of why his mother followed Lee was that without the latter's financial contribution the joint household had to be broken up. Left in Dublin with his father, Shaw compensated for the absence of music in
4750-519: The ' rhyming weaver ' poetry, publication of which began after 1750, though a broadsheet was published in Strabane in 1735. These weaver poets looked to Scotland for their cultural and literary models but were not simple imitators. They were inheritors of the same literary tradition and followed the same poetic and orthographic practices; it is not always immediately possible to distinguish between traditional Scots writing from Scotland and Ulster. Among
4875-620: The 17th century following the 1610 Plantation , with the peak reached during the 1690s. In the core areas of Scots settlement, Scots outnumbered English settlers by five or six to one. In Ulster Scots-speaking areas the work of Scottish poets, such as Allan Ramsay (1686–1758) and Robert Burns (1759–96), was very popular, often in locally printed editions. This was complemented by a poetry revival and nascent prose genre in Ulster, which started around 1720. A tradition of poetry and prose in Ulster Scots began around 1720. The most prominent being
5000-501: The 17th century. Medieval Irish writers also created an extensive literature in Latin: this Hiberno-Latin literature was notable for its learned vocabulary, including a greater use of loanwords from Greek and Hebrew than was common in medieval Latin elsewhere in Europe. The literary Irish language (known in English as Classical Irish), was a sophisticated medium with elaborate verse forms, and
5125-528: The 1840s hastened the retreat of the Irish language. Many of its speakers died of hunger or fever, and many more emigrated. The hedge schools of earlier decades which had helped maintain the native culture were now supplanted by a system of National Schools where English was given primacy. Literacy in Irish was restricted to a very few. A vigorous English-speaking middle class was now the dominant cultural force. A number of its members were influenced by political or cultural nationalism, and some took an interest in
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5250-546: The 2016 version of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , Robert Anderson writes, "Shaw's collected writings on music stand alone in their mastery of English and compulsive readability." Shaw ceased to be a salaried music critic in August 1894, but published occasional articles on the subject throughout his career, his last in 1950. From 1895 to 1898, Shaw was the theatre critic for The Saturday Review , edited by his friend Frank Harris . As at The World , he used
5375-549: The Artists (1881), but neither found a publisher; each was serialised a few years later in the socialist magazine Our Corner . In 1880 Shaw began attending meetings of the Zetetical Society, whose objective was to "search for truth in all matters affecting the interests of the human race". Here he met Sidney Webb , a junior civil servant who, like Shaw, was busy educating himself. Despite difference of style and temperament,
5500-597: The Bourbons nowhere." Total independence, he asserted, was impractical; alliance with a bigger power (preferably England) was essential. The Dublin Easter Rising later that month took him by surprise. After its suppression by British forces, he expressed horror at the summary execution of the rebel leaders, but continued to believe in some form of Anglo-Irish union. In How to Settle the Irish Question (1917), he envisaged
5625-531: The British authorities, and early in 1917 he was invited by Field Marshal Haig to visit the Western Front battlefields. Shaw's 10,000-word report, which emphasised the human aspects of the soldier's life, was well received, and he became less of a lone voice. In April 1917 he joined the national consensus in welcoming America's entry into the war: "a first class moral asset to the common cause against junkerism ". Three short plays by Shaw were premiered during
5750-563: The Crucifixion. Third is a body of romance woven round Fionn Mac Cumhaill , his son Oisin , and his grandson Oscar , in the reigns of the High King of Ireland Cormac mac Airt , in the second and third centuries AD. This cycle of romance is usually called the Fenian cycle because it deals so largely with Fionn Mac Cumhaill and his fianna (militia). The Hill of Allen is often associated with
5875-516: The Fabians debated whether to embrace anarchism , as advocated by Charlotte Wilson , Besant and others, Shaw joined the majority in rejecting this approach. After a rally in Trafalgar Square addressed by Besant was violently broken up by the authorities on 13 November 1887 ( "Bloody Sunday" ), Shaw became convinced of the folly of attempting to challenge police power. Thereafter he largely accepted
6000-548: The Fenian cycle. The chief tales of the Fenian cycle are Acallam na Senórach (often translated as Colloquy with the Ancients or Tales of the Elders of Ireland ) and Tóraigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne ( The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne ). While there are early tales regarding Fionn, the majority of the Fenian cycle appears to have been written later than the other cycles. Fourth
6125-464: The Garden of Eden to the year 31,920 AD. Critics found the five plays strikingly uneven in quality and invention. The original run was brief, and the work has been revived infrequently. Shaw felt he had exhausted his remaining creative powers in the huge span of this "Metabiological Pentateuch". He was now sixty-seven, and expected to write no more plays. This mood was short-lived. In 1920 Joan of Arc
6250-430: The Irish leader was ambushed and killed by anti-treaty forces. In a letter to Collins's sister, Shaw wrote: "I met Michael for the first and last time on Saturday last, and am very glad I did. I rejoice in his memory, and will not be so disloyal to it as to snivel over his valiant death". Shaw remained a British subject all his life, but took dual British-Irish nationality in 1934. Shaw's first major work to appear after
6375-683: The Irish pagan pantheon, the Tuatha Dé Danann . Recurring characters in these stories are Lug , The Dagda and Óengus , while many of the tales are set around the Brú na Bóinne . The principle tale of the Mythological cycle is Cath Maige Tuired ( The Battle of Moytura ), which shows how the Tuatha Dé Danann defeated the Fomorians . Later synthetic histories of Ireland placed this battle as occurring at
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#17331069106306500-611: The Labour members as inconsequential: "I apologise to the Universe for my connection with such a body". In the years after the 1906 election, Shaw felt that the Fabians needed fresh leadership, and saw this in the form of his fellow-writer H. G. Wells , who had joined the society in February 1903. Wells's ideas for reform—particularly his proposals for closer cooperation with the Independent Labour Party—placed him at odds with
6625-574: The London premiere it had ended. The play attracted capacity audiences until July, when Tree insisted on going on holiday, and the production closed. His co-star then toured with the piece in the US. In 1899, when the Boer War began, Shaw wished the Fabians to take a neutral stance on what he deemed, like Home Rule , to be a "non-Socialist" issue. Others, including the future Labour prime minister Ramsay MacDonald , wanted unequivocal opposition, and resigned from
6750-653: The Man in 1894. Influenced by Henrik Ibsen , he sought to introduce a new realism into English-language drama, using his plays as vehicles to disseminate his political, social and religious ideas. By the early twentieth century his reputation as a dramatist was secured with a series of critical and popular successes that included Major Barbara , The Doctor's Dilemma , and Caesar and Cleopatra . Shaw's expressed views were often contentious; he promoted eugenics and alphabet reform , and opposed vaccination and organised religion. He courted unpopularity by denouncing both sides in
6875-518: The Man was not immediately replicated. Candida , which presented a young woman making a conventional romantic choice for unconventional reasons, received a single performance in South Shields in 1895; in 1897 a playlet about Napoleon called The Man of Destiny had a single staging at Croydon . In the 1890s Shaw's plays were better known in print than on the West End stage; his biggest success of
7000-643: The Old Gang should have given way to Wells some years earlier: "God only knows whether the Society had not better have done it". Although less active—he blamed his advancing years—Shaw remained a Fabian. In 1912 Shaw invested £1,000 for a one-fifth share in the Webbs' new publishing venture, a socialist weekly magazine called The New Statesman , which appeared in April 1913. He became a founding director, publicist, and in due course
7125-403: The allegiance of the working class from sport to politics. He persuaded the conference to adopt resolutions abolishing indirect taxation , and taxing unearned income "to extinction". Back in London, Shaw produced what Margaret Cole , in her Fabian history, terms a "grand philippic" against the minority Liberal administration that had taken power in 1892. To Your Tents, O Israel! excoriated
7250-647: The big house". Carleton was an exception, and his Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry showed life on the other side of the social divide. Bram Stoker , the author of Dracula , was outside both traditions, as was the early work of Lord Dunsany . One of the premier ghost story writers of the nineteenth century was Sheridan Le Fanu , whose works include Uncle Silas and Carmilla . The novels and stories, mostly humorous, of Edith Somerville and Violet Florence Martin (who wrote together as Martin Ross), are among
7375-488: The by-line "G.B.S." He campaigned against the artificial conventions and hypocrisies of the Victorian theatre and called for plays of real ideas and true characters. By this time he had embarked in earnest on a career as a playwright: "I had rashly taken up the case; and rather than let it collapse I manufactured the evidence". After using the plot of the aborted 1884 collaboration with Archer to complete Widowers' Houses (it
7500-467: The classics at local schools and schoolmasters by trade. Such writers produced polished work in popular metres for a local audience. This was particularly the case in Munster, in the south-west of Ireland, and notable names included Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin and Aogán Ó Rathaille of Sliabh Luachra . A certain number of local patrons were still to be found, even in the early 19th century, and especially among
7625-773: The contrasting morality of arms manufacturers and the Salvation Army ; The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), a mostly serious piece about professional ethics; and Caesar and Cleopatra , Shaw's counterblast to Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra , seen in New York in 1906 and in London the following year. Now prosperous and established, Shaw experimented with unorthodox theatrical forms described by his biographer Stanley Weintraub as "discussion drama" and "serious farce ". These plays included Getting Married (premiered 1908), The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet (1909), Misalliance (1910), and Fanny's First Play (1911). Blanco Posnet
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#17331069106307750-523: The decade was in New York in 1897, when Richard Mansfield 's production of the historical melodrama The Devil's Disciple earned the author more than £2,000 in royalties. In January 1893, as a Fabian delegate, Shaw attended the Bradford conference which led to the foundation of the Independent Labour Party . He was sceptical about the new party, and scorned the likelihood that it could switch
7875-415: The demand. The play ran from April to July, toured the provinces and was staged in New York. It earned him £341 in royalties in its first year, a sufficient sum to enable him to give up his salaried post as a music critic. Among the cast of the London production was Florence Farr , with whom Shaw had a romantic relationship between 1890 and 1894, much resented by Jenny Patterson. The success of Arms and
8000-415: The dominant Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland; George Carr Shaw, an ineffectual alcoholic, was among the family's less successful members. His relatives secured him a sinecure in the civil service, from which he was pensioned off in the early 1850s; thereafter he worked irregularly as a corn merchant. In 1852 he married Bessie Gurly; in the view of Shaw's biographer Michael Holroyd she married to escape
8125-611: The dominant military power of the world." After the First World War began in August 1914, Shaw produced his tract Common Sense About the War , which argued that the warring nations were equally culpable. Such a view was anathema in an atmosphere of fervent patriotism, and offended many of Shaw's friends; Ervine records that "[h]is appearance at any public function caused the instant departure of many of those present." Despite his errant reputation, Shaw's propagandist skills were recognised by
8250-459: The earliest stories is dateable to the 8th century, and events and characters are referred to in poems dating to the 7th. After the Old Irish period, there is a vast range of poetry from medieval and Renaissance times. By degrees the Irish created a classical tradition in their own language. Verse remained the main vehicle of literary expression, and by the 12th century questions of form and style had been essentially settled, with little change until
8375-411: The early 19th century, but the manuscript remained the most affordable means of transmission almost until the end of the century. Manuscripts were collected by literate individuals (schoolmasters, farmers and others) and were copied and recopied. They might include material several centuries old. Access to them was not confined to the literate, since the contents were read aloud at local gatherings. This
8500-492: The end of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century, Irish literature in English benefited from the work of such authors as Oscar Wilde , Bram Stoker , James Joyce , W. B. Yeats , Samuel Beckett , Elizabeth Bowen , C. S. Lewis , Kate O'Brien and George Bernard Shaw , not all of whom stayed in Ireland. Though English was the dominant Irish literary language in the 20th century, works of high quality were also produced in Irish . A pioneering modernist writer in Irish
8625-431: The essays. The second of these, "Transition", details the case for gradualism and permeation, asserting that "the necessity for cautious and gradual change must be obvious to everyone". In 1890 Shaw produced Tract No. 13, What Socialism Is , a revision of an earlier tract in which Charlotte Wilson had defined socialism in anarchistic terms. In Shaw's new version, readers were assured that "socialism can be brought about in
8750-487: The few surviving families of the Gaelic aristocracy. Irish was still an urban language, and continued to be so well into the 19th century. In the first half of the 18th century Dublin was the home of an Irish-language literary circle connected to the Ó Neachtain (Naughton) family, a group with wide-ranging Continental connections. There is little evidence of female literacy for this period, but women were of great importance in
8875-504: The first part of the book in 807 or 808, for Patrick's heir ( comarba ) Torbach. It was one of the symbols of the office for the Archbishop of Armagh . The Annals of Ulster ( Irish : Annála Uladh ) cover years from AD 431 to AD 1540 and were compiled in the territory of what is now Northern Ireland : entries up to AD 1489 were compiled in the late 15th century by the scribe Ruaidhrí Ó Luinín, under his patron Cathal Óg Mac Maghnusa on
9000-505: The government for ignoring social issues and concentrating solely on Irish Home Rule , a matter Shaw declared of no relevance to socialism. In 1894 the Fabian Society received a substantial bequest from a sympathiser, Henry Hunt Hutchinson—Holroyd mentions £10,000. Webb, who chaired the board of trustees appointed to supervise the legacy, proposed to use most of it to found a school of economics and politics. Shaw demurred; he thought such
9125-533: The highest stratum; they were court officials but were thought to still possess ancient magical powers. Women were largely excluded from the official literature, though female aristocrats could be patrons in their own right. An example is the 15th century noblewoman Mairgréag Ní Cearbhaill, praised by the learned for her hospitality. At that level a certain number of women were literate, and some were contributors to an unofficial corpus of courtly love poetry known as dánta grádha . Prose continued to be cultivated in
9250-636: The house by teaching himself to play the piano. Early in 1876 Shaw learned from his mother that Agnes was dying of tuberculosis . He resigned from the land agents, and in March travelled to England to join his mother and Lucy at Agnes's funeral. He never again lived in Ireland, and did not visit it for twenty-nine years. Initially, Shaw refused to seek clerical employment in London. His mother allowed him to live free of charge in her house in South Kensington , but he nevertheless needed an income. He had abandoned
9375-489: The house. Lee was a conductor and teacher of singing; Bessie had a fine mezzo-soprano voice and was much influenced by Lee's unorthodox method of vocal production. The Shaws' house was often filled with music, with frequent gatherings of singers and players. In 1862 Lee and the Shaws agreed to share a house, No. 1 Hatch Street, in an affluent part of Dublin, and a country cottage on Dalkey Hill , overlooking Killiney Bay . Shaw,
9500-454: The idea of art for art's sake , and insisted that all great art must be didactic . Of Shaw's various reviewing activities in the 1880s and 1890s it was as a music critic that he was best known. After serving as deputy in 1888, he became musical critic of The Star in February 1889, writing under the pen-name Corno di Bassetto. In May 1890 he moved back to The World , where he wrote a weekly column as "G.B.S." for more than four years. In
9625-426: The influence of Archer, Shaw was engaged to write book and music criticism for London papers. When Archer resigned as art critic of The World in 1886, he secured the succession for Shaw. The two figures in the contemporary art world whose views Shaw most admired were William Morris and John Ruskin , and he sought to follow their precepts in his criticisms. Their emphasis on morality appealed to Shaw, who rejected
9750-648: The introduction of printing to Ireland, works in Irish continued to be disseminated in manuscript form. The first printed book in Ireland was the Book of Common Prayer . Access to the printing press was hindered in the 1500s and 1600s by official caution, although an Irish version of the Bible (known as Bedell 's Bible after the Anglican clergyman who commissioned it) was published in the 17th century. A number of popular works in Irish, both devotional and secular, were available in print by
9875-515: The island of Belle Isle on Lough Erne . The Ulster Cycle written in the 12th century, is a body of medieval Irish heroic legends and sagas of the traditional heroes of the Ulaid in what is now eastern Ulster and northern Leinster , particularly counties Armagh , Down and Louth . The stories are written in Old and Middle Irish , mostly in prose, interspersed with occasional verse passages. The language of
10000-458: The language as encapsulating Shaw's ideas and his means of expressing them. Shaw was born at 3 Upper Synge Street in Portobello , a lower-middle-class part of Dublin . He was the youngest child and only son of George Carr Shaw and Lucinda Elizabeth (Bessie) Shaw ( née Gurly). His elder siblings were Lucinda (Lucy) Frances and Elinor Agnes. The Shaw family was of English descent and belonged to
10125-766: The late 1920s, he had largely renounced Fabian Society gradualism, and often wrote and spoke favourably of dictatorships of the right and left—he expressed admiration for both Mussolini and Stalin . In the final decade of his life, he made fewer public statements but continued to write prolifically until shortly before his death, aged ninety-four, having refused all state honours, including the Order of Merit in 1946. Since Shaw's death scholarly and critical opinion about his works has varied, but he has regularly been rated among British dramatists as second only to Shakespeare ; analysts recognise his extensive influence on generations of English-language playwrights. The word Shavian has entered
10250-974: The late twentieth century, Irish poets, especially those from Northern Ireland, came to prominence including Derek Mahon , Medbh McGuckian , John Montague , Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon . Influential works of writing continue to emerge in Northern Ireland with huge success such as Anna Burns , Sinéad Morrissey , and Lisa McGee . Well-known Irish writers in English in the twenty-first century include Edna O'Brien , Colum McCann , Anne Enright , Roddy Doyle , Moya Cannon , Sebastian Barry , Colm Toibín , and John Banville , all of whom have all won major awards. Younger writers include Sinéad Gleeson , Paul Murray , Anna Burns , Billy O'Callaghan , Kevin Barry , Emma Donoghue , Donal Ryan , Sally Rooney , William Wall , Marina Carr , and Martin McDonagh . Irish has one of
10375-446: The latter part of the nineteenth century saw a rapid replacement of Irish by English in the greater part of the country, largely due to the Great Famine and the subsequent decimation of the Irish population by starvation and emigration. Another theory among modern scholars is that far from being a sudden cataclysmic event the language shift was well underway much earlier. At the end of the century, however, cultural nationalism displayed
10500-642: The leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature . Born in Dublin, in 1876 Shaw moved to London, where he struggled to establish himself as a writer and novelist, and embarked on a rigorous process of self-education. By the mid-1880s he had become a respected theatre and music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the gradualist Fabian Society and became its most prominent pamphleteer. Shaw had been writing plays for years before his first public success, Arms and
10625-457: The literature of the Irish language. One such was a young Protestant scholar called Samuel Ferguson who studied the language privately and discovered its poetry, which he began to translate. He was preceded by James Hardiman , who in 1831 had published the first comprehensive attempt to collect popular poetry in Irish. These and other attempts supplied a bridge between the literatures of the two languages. Maria Edgeworth (1767–1849) furnished
10750-455: The medieval period in the form of tales. The Norman invasion of the 12th century introduced a new body of stories which influenced the Irish tradition, and in time translations were made from English. Irish poets also composed the Dindsenchas ("lore of places"), a class of onomastic texts recounting the origins of place-names and traditions concerning events and characters associated with
10875-556: The most accomplished products of Anglo-Irish literature, though written exclusively from the viewpoint of the "big house". In 1894 they published The Real Charlotte . George Moore spent much of his early career in Paris and was one of the first writers to use the techniques of the French realist novelists in English. George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw ,
11000-411: The next four years Shaw made a negligible income from writing, and was subsidised by his mother. In 1881, for the sake of economy, and increasingly as a matter of principle, he became a vegetarian . In the same year he suffered an attack of smallpox ; eventually he grew a beard to hide the resultant facial scar. In rapid succession he wrote two more novels: The Irrational Knot (1880) and Love Among
11125-416: The oldest vernacular literatures in western Europe (after Greek and Latin ). The Irish became fully literate with the arrival of Christianity in the fifth century. Before that time a simple writing system known as “ ogham ” was used for inscriptions. These inscriptions are mostly simple "x son of y" statements. The introduction of Latin led to the adaptation of the Latin alphabet to the Irish language and
11250-399: The oral tradition. They were the main composers of traditional laments. The most famous of these is Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire , composed in the late 18th century by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill , one of the last of the Gaelic gentry of West Kerry. Compositions of this sort were not committed to writing until collected in the 19th century. Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age Well after
11375-408: The part of the managers of Vienna and Berlin that I should have my plays performed by them first." The British production opened in April 1914, starring Sir Herbert Tree and Mrs Patrick Campbell as, respectively, a professor of phonetics and a cockney flower-girl. There had earlier been a romantic liaison between Shaw and Campbell that caused Charlotte Shaw considerable concern, but by the time of
11500-459: The places in question. Since many of the legends related concern the acts of mythic and legendary figures, the dindsenchas is an important source for the study of Irish mythology. Early Irish literature is usually arranged in four epic cycles. These cycles are considered to contain a series of recurring characters and locations. The first of these is the Mythological Cycle , which concerns
11625-399: The play brilliant but ponderously acted, except for Edith Evans as Lady Utterword. Shaw's largest-scale theatrical work was Back to Methuselah , written in 1918–20 and staged in 1922. Weintraub describes it as "Shaw's attempt to fend off 'the bottomless pit of an utterly discouraging pessimism'". This cycle of five interrelated plays depicts evolution, and the effects of longevity, from
11750-587: The poet Dáibhí Ó Bruadair and the anonymous authors of Pairliment Chloinne Tomáis , a prose satire on the aspirations of the lower classes. Prose of another sort was represented by the historical works of Geoffrey Keating (Seathrún Céitinn) and the compilation known as the Annals of the Four Masters . The consequences of these changes were seen in the 18th century. Poetry was still the dominant literary medium and its practitioners were often poor scholars, educated in
11875-482: The principle of "permeation" as advocated by Webb: the notion whereby socialism could best be achieved by infiltration of people and ideas into existing political parties. Throughout the 1880s the Fabian Society remained small, its message of moderation frequently unheard among more strident voices. Its profile was raised in 1889 with the publication of Fabian Essays in Socialism , edited by Shaw who also provided two of
12000-634: The rest of their lives. They retained a London flat in the Adelphi and later at Whitehall Court . During the first decade of the twentieth century, Shaw secured a firm reputation as a playwright. In 1904 J. E. Vedrenne and Harley Granville-Barker established a company at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square , Chelsea to present modern drama. Over the next five years they staged fourteen of Shaw's plays. The first, John Bull's Other Island ,
12125-411: The rise of a small literate class, both clerical and lay. The earliest works of literature produced in Ireland are by Saint Patrick ; his Confessio and Epistola , both in Latin. The earliest literature in Irish consisted of lyric poetry and prose sagas set in the distant past. The earliest poetry, composed in the 6th century, illustrates a vivid religious faith or describes the world of nature, and
12250-730: The same time as the Trojan War . Second is the Ulster Cycle , mentioned above, also known as the Red Branch Cycle or the Heroic Cycle. This cycle contains tales of the conflicts between Ulster and Connacht during the legendary reigns of King Conchobar mac Nessa in Ulster and Medb and Ailill in Connacht. The chief saga of the Ulster cycle is Táin Bó Cúailnge , the so-called " Iliad of
12375-553: The same year the critic William Archer suggested a collaboration, with a plot by Archer and dialogue by Shaw. The project foundered, but Shaw returned to the draft as the basis of Widowers' Houses in 1892, and the connection with Archer proved of immense value to Shaw's career. On 5 September 1882 Shaw attended a meeting at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon , addressed by the political economist Henry George . Shaw then read George's book Progress and Poverty , which awakened his interest in economics. He began attending meetings of
12500-569: The society when it followed Shaw. In the Fabians' war manifesto, Fabianism and the Empire (1900), Shaw declared that "until the Federation of the World becomes an accomplished fact we must accept the most responsible Imperial federations available as a substitute for it". As the new century began, Shaw became increasingly disillusioned by the limited impact of the Fabians on national politics. Thus, although
12625-412: The society's "Old Gang", led by Shaw. According to Cole, Wells "had minimal capacity for putting [his ideas] across in public meetings against Shaw's trained and practised virtuosity". In Shaw's view, "the Old Gang did not extinguish Mr Wells, he annihilated himself". Wells resigned from the society in September 1908; Shaw remained a member, but left the executive in April 1911. He later wondered whether
12750-520: The status of an Irish patriot. Oliver Goldsmith (1730–1774), born in County Longford, moved to London, where he became part of the literary establishment, though his poetry reflects his youth in Ireland. He is best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770), and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1771, first performed in 1773). Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
12875-407: The tightening of English control over Ireland and the suppression of the traditional aristocracy. This meant that the literary class lost its patrons, since the new nobility were English speakers with little sympathy for the older culture. The elaborate classical metres lost their dominance and were largely replaced by more popular forms. This was an age of social and political tension, as expressed by
13000-407: The two quickly recognised qualities in each other and developed a lifelong friendship. Shaw later reflected: "You knew everything that I didn't know and I knew everything you didn't know ... We had everything to learn from one another and brains enough to do it". Shaw's next attempt at drama was a one-act playlet in French, Un Petit Drame , written in 1884 but not published in his lifetime. In
13125-682: The war was Heartbreak House , written in 1916–17 and performed in 1920. It was produced on Broadway in November, and was coolly received; according to The Times : "Mr Shaw on this occasion has more than usual to say and takes twice as long as usual to say it". After the London premiere in October 1921 The Times concurred with the American critics: "As usual with Mr Shaw, the play is about an hour too long", although containing "much entertainment and some profitable reflection". Ervine in The Observer thought
13250-582: The war. The Inca of Perusalem , written in 1915, encountered problems with the censor for burlesquing not only the enemy but the British military command; it was performed in 1916 at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre . O'Flaherty V.C. , satirising the government's attitude to Irish recruits, was banned in the UK and was presented at a Royal Flying Corps base in Belgium in 1917. Augustus Does His Bit ,
13375-508: The works of T.S. Eliot and Flann O'Brien , and Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib ( The War of the Irish with the Foreigners ), which tells of Brian Boru's wars against the Vikings. Unlike the other cycles there is not a consistent set of characters or locations in this cycle, as the stories settings span more than a thousand years; though many stories feature Conn Cétchathach or Niall Noígíallach and
13500-410: Was Arms and the Man (1894), a mock- Ruritanian comedy satirising conventions of love, military honour and class. The press found the play overlong, and accused Shaw of mediocrity, sneering at heroism and patriotism, heartless cleverness, and copying W. S. Gilbert 's style. The public took a different view, and the management of the theatre staged extra matinée performances to meet
13625-516: Was Máirtín Ó Cadhain , and prominent poets included Caitlín Maude , Máirtín Ó Direáin , Seán Ó Ríordáin and Máire Mhac an tSaoi . Prominent bilingual writers included Brendan Behan (who wrote poetry and a play in Irish) and Flann O'Brien . Two novels by O'Brien, At Swim Two Birds and The Third Policeman , are considered early examples of postmodern fiction, but he also wrote a satirical novel in Irish called An Béal Bocht (translated as The Poor Mouth ). Liam O'Flaherty , who gained fame as
13750-486: Was Pádraic Ó Conaire , and traditional life was given vigorous expression in a series of autobiographies by native Irish speakers from the west coast, exemplified by the work of Tomás Ó Criomhthain and Peig Sayers . Máiréad Ní Ghráda wrote numerous successful plays often influenced by Bertolt Brecht , as well as the first translation of Peter Pan , Tír na Deo , and Manannán , the first Irish language Science fiction book. The outstanding modernist prose writer in Irish
13875-405: Was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory , Shaw became
14000-680: Was banned on religious grounds by the Lord Chamberlain (the official theatre censor in England), and was produced instead in Dublin; it filled the Abbey Theatre to capacity. Fanny's First Play , a comedy about suffragettes , had the longest initial run of any Shaw play—622 performances. Androcles and the Lion (1912), a less heretical study of true and false religious attitudes than Blanco Posnet , ran for eight weeks in September and October 1913. It
14125-506: Was born in Dublin and came to serve in the House of Commons of Great Britain on behalf of the Whig Party, and establish a reputation in his oratory and published works for great philosophical clarity as well as a lucid literary style. Scots , mainly Gaelic -speaking, had been settling in Ulster since the 15th century, but large numbers of Scots -speaking Lowlanders , some 200,000, arrived during
14250-551: Was driven to applying for office jobs. In the interim he secured a reader's pass for the British Museum Reading Room (the forerunner of the British Library ) and spent most weekdays there, reading and writing. His first attempt at drama, begun in 1878, was a blank-verse satirical piece on a religious theme. It was abandoned unfinished, as was his first try at a novel. His first completed novel, Immaturity (1879),
14375-465: Was enthusiastically received there, and at its London premiere the following March. In Weintraub's phrase, "even the Nobel prize committee could no longer ignore Shaw after Saint Joan". The citation for the literature prize for 1925 praised his work as "... marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty". He accepted the award, but rejected
14500-499: Was followed by one of Shaw's most successful plays, Pygmalion , written in 1912 and staged in Vienna the following year, and in Berlin shortly afterwards. Shaw commented, "It is the custom of the English press when a play of mine is produced, to inform the world that it is not a play—that it is dull, blasphemous, unpopular, and financially unsuccessful. ... Hence arose an urgent demand on
14625-491: Was never consummated; whether this was wholly at Charlotte's wish, as Shaw liked to suggest, is less widely credited. In the early weeks of the marriage Shaw was much occupied writing his Marxist analysis of Wagner 's Ring cycle , published as The Perfect Wagnerite late in 1898. In 1906 the Shaws found a country home in Ayot St Lawrence , Hertfordshire; they renamed the house " Shaw's Corner ", and lived there for
14750-478: Was proclaimed a saint by Pope Benedict XV ; Shaw had long found Joan an interesting historical character, and his view of her veered between "half-witted genius" and someone of "exceptional sanity". He had considered writing a play about her in 1913, and the canonisation prompted him to return to the subject. He wrote Saint Joan in the middle months of 1923, and the play was premiered on Broadway in December. It
14875-556: Was reformed in 1899 and the St Pancras vestry became the Metropolitan Borough of St Pancras , he was elected to the newly formed borough council. In 1898, as a result of overwork, Shaw's health broke down. He was nursed by Charlotte Payne-Townshend , a rich Anglo-Irish woman whom he had met through the Webbs. The previous year she had proposed that she and Shaw should marry. He had declined, but when she insisted on nursing him in
15000-405: Was sometimes written in the margins of illuminated manuscripts. "The Blackbird of Belfast Lough ", a fragment of syllabic verse probably dating from the 9th century, has inspired reinterpretations and translations in modern times by John Montague , John Hewitt , Seamus Heaney , Ciaran Carson , and Thomas Kinsella , as well as a version into modern Irish by Tomás Ó Floinn. The Book of Armagh
15125-404: Was staged twice in London, in December 1892), Shaw continued writing plays. At first he made slow progress; The Philanderer , written in 1893 but not published until 1898, had to wait until 1905 for a stage production. Similarly, Mrs Warren's Profession (1893) was written five years before publication and nine years before reaching the stage. Shaw's first play to bring him financial success
15250-736: Was still the case in the late 19th century in Irish-speaking districts. Manuscripts were often taken abroad, particularly to America . In the 19th century, many of these were collected by individuals or cultural institutions. Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), a powerful and versatile satirist, was Ireland's first earliest notable writer in English. Swift held positions of authority in both England and Ireland at different times. Many of Swift's works reflected support for Ireland during times of political turmoil with England, including Proposal for Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720), Drapier's Letters (1724), and A Modest Proposal (1729), and earned him
15375-405: Was taught in bardic schools (i.e. academies of higher learning) both in Ireland and Scotland. These produced historians, lawyers and a professional literary class which depended on the aristocracy for patronage. Much of the writing produced in this period was conventional in character, in praise of patrons and their families, but the best of it was of exceptionally high quality and included poetry of
15500-447: Was too grim to appeal to publishers and did not appear until the 1930s. He was employed briefly by the newly formed Edison Telephone Company in 1879–80 and, as in Dublin, achieved rapid promotion. Nonetheless, when the Edison firm merged with the rival Bell Telephone Company, Shaw chose not to seek a place in the new organisation. Thereafter he pursued a full-time career as an author. For
15625-443: Was uncongenial to the whole spirit of the neo-Gaelic movement, which is bent on creating a new Ireland after its own ideal, whereas my play is a very uncompromising presentment of the real old Ireland." Nonetheless, Shaw and Yeats were close friends; Yeats and Lady Gregory tried unsuccessfully to persuade Shaw to take up the vacant co-directorship of the Abbey Theatre after J. M. Synge 's death in 1909. Shaw admired other figures in
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