Ireland has passed through numerous identity crises in the last century, keeping the meaning of Irishness in constant flux. This book explores how diverse writers have positioned their life stories within the wider narrative of the nation's development. Examining the wealth of autobiographical texts written by Irish writers in the twentieth century, including W.B. Yeats, Tomas O'Crohan, Frank O'Connor, Brendan Behan, Frank McCourt and Nuala O'Faolain, the study highlights the plurality of Irish identity and the main characteristics which typify the genre of Irish autobiography. In charting the social and cultural history of Ireland through the first-hand accounts of the country's most celebrated writers, the author also identifies important overlaps between fiction and memory, finds intersections with folklore and the short story, and draws out relationships within and between texts. The book repositions the important and often overlooked genre of Irish autobiography by highlighting its importance within both Irish Studies and the field of Autobiography and by opening up the ways in which lives can be written and read.

"Original, important, moving, witty and exquisitely-written. WHAT a feat." - BERNARDINE EVARISTO "Incredible... beautiful and funny and humane." - EMILIE PINE "Pristine poetry and prose." KATHERINE MAY, AUTHOR OF WINTERING "Babies who are this small, he says, have a good chance of survival. Small is not good for babies. It is not whimsical or cute or the cause of admiration. It is the first time it occurs to us that they might not survive. Babies die from smallness." Claire Lynch knew that having children with her wife would be complicated but she could never have anticipated the extent to which her life would be redrawn by the process. This dazzling debut begins with the smallest of life's substances, the microscopic cells subdividing in a petri dish in a fertility treatment centre. She moves through her story in incremental yet ever growing steps, from the fingernail-sized pregnancy test result screen which bears two affirmative lines to the premature arrival of her children who have to wear scale-model oxygen masks in their life-saving incubators. Devastatingly poignant and profoundly observant - and funny against the odds - Claire considers whether it is our smallness that makes our lives so big.