gigib

I also posted this question on TA, and was given two playwrights, Synge and O'Casey.

For our trip to Ireland this November I have reread Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, absolutely reveling in them both, I will also read Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake before we go.

So, who else might I check out? I do prefer classics due to the experience of another time period, I'm a great fan of 19th century English literature.

outwest

He's contemporary but you might enjoy Colm Toibin.

Fra_Diavolo

There are more contemporary, but you might want to try Roddy Doyle's novels, such as Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes has withering scenes set in Ireland.

Gretchen

Maybe How the Irish Saved Civilization. Great book

Cathinjoetown

Another contemporary writer worth a look, Brian Friel.

Shaw and Wilde, but both based their most famous works in England.

W.B. Yeats

PalenQ

If you want to read and understand Finnegan's Wake before you go you better get reading NOW - like my Prof in college said 'Joyce planned Finnegan's Wake to be so intricate - what with all the classical references and such that he - Joyce expected some folks would devote their whole life to trying to decode and understand it."

Ulysees is somewhat this way - I turned 21 in Dublin and went out to Sandycove and the Martello Tower there with some beer to celebrate on the beach featured so prominently in Portrait of an Artist

IMDonehere

For some reason Brendan Behan has fallen out favor. Oscar Wilde, one of the greatest wits. Samuel Beckett one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Yeats, William Congreve, CS Lewis, GB Shaw, Iris Murdoch, Edna O'Brien, Swift, Joyce Cary, Seamus Heaney.

And for me of the greatest literary figures-Laurence Sterne. He was Irish by birth but had an English sensibility as well since he was an Anglican minsiter.

Fra_Diavolo

Difficult as Ulysses is, Finnegans Wake (there's no apostrophe) is on a different scale entirely. It took me about five weeks to read the former. I spent the same amount of time on FW in a reading group led by a Joyce scholar. We covered about seventy pages, selected from different part of the . . . book, I'd guess you call it. If you should find the whole rather daunting, I'd suggest you try the Anna Livia Plurabelle section (pages 196-216 in the standard edition of 628 pages).

PatrickLondon

20th century rather than 19th, but how about

Flann O'Brien (Brian Nolan)

Frank O'Connor

Another contemporary writer: John Banville

Poetry? WB Yeats.

If you want 19th century Irish life (albeit from a particular Anglo-Irish point of view), try Somerville and Ross's Irish RM stories.

IMDonehere

Joyce's The Dubliners and Portrait of The Artist are quite accessible.

kagoo

Also contemporary, William Trevor. One of the greatest short story writers who ever put pen to paper.

Second vote for Colm Toibin.

flanneruk

Ireland's language is English. The classical literature of Ireland is the same as the classical literature of the rest of the British Isles.

My literate 19th century ancestors (almost all Irish. And, thanks to the education system the British taxpayer subsidised in Ireland, far more literate than my few English ancestors) didn't waste their time on second-rate "Oirish" scribblers.

They read Dickens, Trollope and Thackeray like any other intelligent Briton. And Shakespeare and the great Anglo-Irish of the 17th and 18th centuries like Sheridan and Goldsmith.

The fatuous delusion that civilised Irishpeople were Fenian terrorists is entirely the invention of American psychopaths like the ghastly De Valera.

ribeirasacra

***Ireland's language is English.***
Discuss!

sandralist

Wilde

(I can't be the only one who has previously formed the conclusion that flanneruk's parents/ancestors either get a total pass or a torally responsible for the results.

Anyway, I wouldn't take the flanner household as a model to follow. Even just a simple Google search like "greatest Irish authors" would be more enlightening.

sandralist

(and I should add, Jonathan Swift -- especially if you plan to write a trip report -- but also a Modest Proposal)

sandralist

Unless of course, the language of America being English, you'd rather just not bother with focusing on the has-been British Isles at all and stick with a superior culture. However, what makes it fun to read the Irish is to read another culture that rebelled and largely freed themselves of the British monarchy (or at least the smart ones did). It's an enduring bond.

Pepper_von_snoot

John McGahern--That They May Face The Rising Sun; Amongst Women

Anne Enright--The Gathering, won the Booker Prize 2007. I loved this novel.

Roddy Doyle--The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. On my Favourite Books List.

Another great novel by Roddy Doyle--A Star Called Henry. On the New York Times' Top 100 Books List for 1999.

Thin, read Mrs. Dalloway whilst being arrested by the NYPD (along time ago)

IMDonehere

Someone, might say, stick it up your Erse.

Cathinjoetown

Flanner,

It might help to read the original question occasionally before lauching into one of your hateful rants against any culture other than England's. This time Irish writers get the sharp end of your stick; I must admit a welcome break from the American rants.

OP is prepping for a trip to IRELAND. Dickens, Shakespeare, etc, sterling though they are, don't have much to say about Ireland.

When I mentioned Wilde and Shaw, it was with the caveat that most, if not all, their works are Anglo-centric.

MissPrism

You might be interested in Patrick MacGill "Children of the dead end". I've heard it described as Angela's Ashes but with real hardship and no whinging.

It was published in 1914 and was a bestseller in its day.