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In the second volume of his beloved Connemara trilogy, cartographer
Tim Robinson continues to unearth the stories of this rich
landscape--weaving placelore, etymology, geology, and the meeting
of sea and shore into the region's mythologies.From the northern
fiord waters of Killary Harbour to the southern sea-washed islands
of Slyne Head, western Connemara awes with a rugged landscape:
sloping cliffs, towering mountains, and the ever-present thudding
of the Atlantic. And here, within the earth, resides the record of
the past; stones with ash-grey centers reveal volcanic episodes, a
series of mysteriously arranged quartz boulders reminds us of the
ancient secrets held in the soil, and a long-disappeared lake
filled in by sand lies beneath a golf course, waiting to be
rediscovered.Mapping more than geography, Tim Robinson charts
Connemara's deep relationship to those who have inhabited its
surface. The Last Pool of Darkness brims with tales of ghosts,
centuries-old land disputes, periods of religious and political
upheavals, philosophers entranced by the isolating landscape,
poets, mathematicians, artists, fantastical smugglers, the
discovery of botanical rarities, trickster fairies, and the
delicate balance between humans and nature. Not merely a "certain
tract of the Earth's surface" but "an accumulation of
connotations," Robinson's Connemara offers readers an opportunity
to travel across space and time.A work of great precision and
tenderness, The Last Pool of Darkness is an enchanting addition to
the Seedbank series and next chapter in "one of the most remarkable
non-fiction projects undertaken in English" (Robert Macfarlane).
This significant book explains how work-life balance is being
destroyed because individuals fail to link their work effort with
its adverse environmental effects and the personal costs they
impose. The burgeoning literature dealing with work-life balance
suggests that the developed world is more interested in this issue
today than at any other time in the recent past. Provocative and
insightful, Work, Leisure and the Environment presents a rigorous
explanation based on economic theory as to why contemporary
societies suffer from over-work and work-life imbalance, asserting
that they are both the cause and effect of environmental
degradation. The author focuses upon a fundamental flaw in
contemporary market economies that causes individuals to
unknowingly reduce their well-being by working and consuming
excessively, while enjoying inadequate leisure time. It is argued
that this inability to correctly assess the benefits derived from
their work effort causes individuals to place unreasonable and
unsustainable demands on the environment. By ignoring the
environmental destruction that accompanies work effort, its
benefits are overestimated and, as a consequence, individuals
voluntarily choose to work longer hours than they should. This
engaging volume will have widespread appeal amongst researchers and
policymakers interested in the environment, consumerism and labour
markets and will also be an invaluable reference tool for studies
into leisure and work-life balance.
"I find him to be a kindred spirit, a sympathetic but shrewd
enquirer, a companionable stroller, and a lover of anecdotes
gathered by the wayside." Â So Tim Robinson described
folklorist, revolutionary, and district justice Seán Mac
Giollarnáth, whose 1941 book Annála Beaga ó Iorras
Aithneach revealed his sheer delight in the rich language and
stories of the people he encountered in Conamara, the
Irish-speaking region in the south of Connemara. From tales of
smugglers, saints, and scholars to memories of food, work, and
family, the stories gathered here provide invaluable insights into
the lives and culture of the community. This faithful and lovingly
crafted translation, complete with annotations, a biography, and
thoughtful chapters that explore the importance of the language and
region, is the final work of both Robinson and his collaborator,
the renowned writer and Irish language expert Liam Mac Con Iomaire.
Translated into English for the first time, Conamara
Chronicles: Tales from Iorras Aithneach preserves the art of
storytellers in the West of Ireland and honors the inspiration they
kindle even still.Â
The first volume in Tim Robinson's phenomenal Connemara Trilogy -
which Robert Macfarlane has called 'One of the most remarkable
non-fiction projects undertaken in English'. In its landscape,
history and folklore, Connemara is a singular region: ill-defined
geographically, and yet unmistakably a place apart from the rest of
Ireland. Tim Robinson, who established himself as Ireland's most
brilliant living non-fiction writer with the two-volume Stones of
Aran, moved from Aran to Connemara nearly twenty years ago. This
book is the result of his extraordinary engagement with the
mountains, bogs and shorelines of the region, and with its folklore
and its often terrible history: a work as beautiful and surprising
as the place it attempts to describe. Chosen as a book of the year
by Iain Sinclair, Robert Macfarlane and Colm Toibin 'One of the
greatest writers of lands ... No one has disentangled the tales the
stones of Ireland have to tell so deftly and retold them so
beautifully' Fintan O'Toole 'Dazzling ... an indubitable classic'
Giles Foden, Conde Nast Traveller 'He is that rarest of phenomena,
a scientist and an artist, and his method is to combine scientific
rigour with artistic reverie in a seamless blend that both informs
and delights' John Banville 'One of contemporary Ireland's finest
literary stylists' Joseph O'Connor, Guardian
The second volume in Tim Robinson's phenomenal Connemara Trilogy -
which Robert Macfarlane has called 'One of the most remarkable
non-fiction projects undertaken in English'. The first volume of
Tim Robinson's Connemara trilogy, Listening to the Wind, covered
Robinson's home territory of Roundstone and environs. The Last Pool
of Darkness moves into wilder territory: the fjords, cliffs, hills
and islands of north-west Connemara, a place that Wittgenstein, who
lived on his own in a cottage there for a time, called 'the last
pool of darkness in Europe'. Again combining his polymathic
knowledge of Connemara's natural history, human history, folklore
and topography with his own unsurpassable artistry as a writer, Tim
Robinson has produced another classic. A native of Yorkshire, Tim
Robinson moved to the Aran Islands in 1972. His books include the
celebrated two-volume Stones of Aran. Since 1984 he has lived in
Roundstone, Connemara. 'The Proust & Ruskin of modern
place-writing, deep-mapper of Irish landscapes, visionary thinker,
and human of exceptional intellectual generosity & kindness. He
was an immense inspiration to & encourager of me & my work'
Robert Macfarlane 'A masterpiece of travel and topographical
writing and a miraculous, vivid and engrossing meditation on
landscape and history and the sacred mood of places' Colm Toibin,
Irish Times 'One of the greatest writers of lands ... No one has
disentangled the tales the stones of Ireland have to tell so deftly
and retold them so beautifully' Fintan O'Toole
Considered by his 18th-century contemporaries to be the greatest
botanist since Linnaeus', this is the first full biography of The
Founding Father of Indian Botany', William Roxburgh. Born in the
mid 18th-century, William Roxburgh was brought up in the centre of
the Edinburgh Enlightenment, with all the patronage and
intellectual curiosity that this entailed. After joining the East
India Company as an Assistant Surgeon on one of their ships, he
joined the staff of the General Hospital at Madras. Soon, he was
Company Naturalist, describing many species for the first time
which inspired some beautiful watercolour drawings by Indian
artists, copies of which were sent to Sir Joseph Banks at Kew.
Arising from his scientific work, he was appointed the first paid
Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden in 1793, where he
continued his previous experimental work as well as looking into
the introduction of a wide range of crops.
"I find him to be a kindred spirit, a sympathetic but shrewd
enquirer, a companionable stroller, and a lover of anecdotes
gathered by the wayside." So Tim Robinson described folklorist,
revolutionary, and district justice Sean Mac Giollarnath, whose
1941 book Annala Beaga o Iorras Aithneach revealed his sheer
delight in the rich language and stories of the people he
encountered in Conamara, the Irish-speaking region in the south of
Connemara. From tales of smugglers, saints, and scholars to
memories of food, work, and family, the stories gathered here
provide invaluable insights into the lives and culture of the
community. This faithful and lovingly crafted translation, complete
with annotations, a biography, and thoughtful chapters that explore
the importance of the language and region, is the final work of
both Robinson and his collaborator, the renowned writer and Irish
language expert Liam Mac Con Iomaire. Translated into English for
the first time, Conamara Chronicles: Tales from Iorras Aithneach
preserves the art of storytellers in the West of Ireland and honors
the inspiration they kindle even still.
The Aran Islands, in Galway Bay off the west coast of Ireland, are
a unique geological and cultural landscape, and for centuries their
stark beauty and their inhabitants' traditional way of life have
attracted pilgrims from abroad. The Aran Islands, in Galway Bay off
the west coast of Ireland, are a unique geological and cultural
landscape, and for centuries their stark beauty and their
inhabitants' traditional way of life have attracted pilgrims from
abroad. After a visit with his wife in 1972, Tim Robinson moved to
the islands, where he started making maps and gathering stories,
eventually developing the idea for a cosmic history of Arainn, the
largest of the three islands. "Pilgrimage" is the first of two
volumes that make up "Stones of Aran," in which Robinson maps the
length and breadth of Arainn. Here he circles the entire island,
following a clockwise, sunwise path in quest of the "good step," in
which walking itself becomes a form of attention and contemplation.
Like Annie Dillard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" and Bruce Chatwin's
"In Patagonia," "Stones of Aran" is not only a meticulous and
mesmerizing study of place but an entrancing and altogether
unclassifiable work of literature. Robinson explores Aran in both
its elemental and mythical dimensions, taking us deep into the
island's folklore, wildlife, names, habitations, and natural and
human histories. Bringing to life the ongoing, forever
unpredictable encounter between one man and a given landscape,
"Stones of Aran" discovers worlds.
Robinson's voyage continues in "Stones of Aran: Labyrinth"
A brilliant new translation of O Cadhain's modern Irish literature
masterpiece, meant to spark debate and comparison with Alan
Titley's Dirty Dust, now with bonus materials on its history,
reception, interpretations, adaptations, and more "Gloriously
attuned to the energy, copiousness, invective and ribaldry of the
original Cre na Cille."-Patricia Craig, Times Literary Supplement
"Corrosively satirical and darkly comic. . . . A tour de force of a
gabfest."-Mark Harman, Los Angeles Review of Books In critical
opinion and popular polls, Mairtin O Cadhain's Graveyard Clay is
invariably ranked the most important prose work in modern Irish.
This bold new translation of his radically original Cre na Cille is
the shared project of two fluent speakers of the Irish of O
Cadhain's native region, Liam Mac Con Iomaire and Tim Robinson.
They have achieved a lofty goal: to convey O Cadhain's meaning
accurately and to meet his towering literary standards. Graveyard
Clay is a novel of black humor, reminiscent of the work of Synge
and Beckett. The story unfolds entirely in dialogue as the newly
dead arrive in the graveyard, bringing news of recent local
happenings to those already confined in their coffins. Avalanches
of gossip, backbiting, flirting, feuds, and scandal-mongering
ensue, while the absurdity of human nature becomes ever clearer.
This edition of O Cadhain's masterpiece is enriched with footnotes,
bibliography, publication and reception history, and other
materials that invite further study and deeper enjoyment of his
most engaging and challenging work.
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