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Volume 4, Issue 4
Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist
Anthony Cronin
Harper Collins
This 1997 volume is a close look at the Irish writer of the 20th century who came closest to achieving the international acclaim accorded his friend James Joyce.
Beckett, a true Irish exile, is most widely known as a playwright with his master work in both critical consumer eyes being the ageless Waiting for Godot. Beckett was, however, a great author of prose, a film maker, and the embodiment of the Joycean exile.
Cronin's 645 page volume dissects Beckett's life and work from his ambivalence toward his native Dublin through the post-WWII years of incessant work in a small house outside Paris with small recognition until the mid 20th century and on into the 1960's and 70's. Beckett died in Paris in 1989.
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Volume 4, Issue 4
A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology
by James MacKillop
The mythological world of the ancient Celts is not as familiar to most Americans as are the classical myths of Greece and Rome. This gap in our cultural literacy is unfortunate, for, as this dictionary reveals, the Celtic peoples developed a rich and fascinating tradition of legends and myths.
In compiling this volume, MacKillop, an English professor who specializes in Celtic studies, drew not only upon texts written in Irish and Welsh but also in Breton, Cornish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic sources and traditions. In addition to gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, creatures, and other mythological figures, the approximately 4,000 entries cover real and imaginary places, archaeological sites, animals and plants, narrative cycles, and ideas. Entries, which frequently include variant spellings and etymologies, vary in length from a single identifying phrase to more than four pages, but the majority are one or two paragraphs. Asterisks within the text of an article indicate those terms that are treated further in separate entries, and numerous cross-references guide the user from alternate titles, names, and spellings to the forms used by MacKillop.
Supplementing the dictionary portion of the work are a general guide to pronunciation of the various Celtic languages and a 13-page bibliography of selected sources pertaining to Celtic literature and culture. Especially helpful is a topical index that classifies entries under 36 broad categories, such as concepts, games, literary forms, monsters, rituals and curses, and saints.
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Volume 4, Issue 3
The West: Stories from Ireland
Eddie Stack
Island House (US) and Bloombury (UK)
Eddie Stack's first collection of short stories was published in 1990. A literary time piece from the opening tale, Time Passes, to the final story Derramore, the seven stories in this collection are set in the West of Ireland. Stack captures Irish life in all it's ambiguities with the intimacy of a person sitting in your kitchen. Eddie Stack in his wit, originality will stand up with the best of Irish writing.
Eddie Stack's work:
- State of the Art: Stories from New Irish Writers
- Great Irish Christmas Stories
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Volume 4, Issue 2
Annie Moore: First in line for America
Review by Colleen Miner, age 12 (2002)
Eithne Loughrey
Irish Books and Media
www.irishbooks.com
A fiction based on a true story, Annie Moore was the first to enter the United States through Ellis Island on the day it opened in 1892. Author Eithne Loughry spins a story of one family's emigration to the United States that accurately portrays what life would be in turn-of-the-century America complete with all the elements of the bitter-sweet ambition of a determined young woman. This trilogy, Annie Moore First in line for America, Annie Moore New York City Girl, and Annie Moore, Golden Dollar Girl, begins in Ireland and ends on the great plains of America. It's easy to read and great for a summer's rainy day.
Eithne Loughrey lives in Dublin. She has worked with the Irish Independent and as a publisher's copy-editor.
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