Debates about Irish culture have long been plagued by neat oppositions between conquering England and colonized Erin, Protestant and Catholic, stolid Saxon and dreamy Celt. Yet the greatest Irish poets have scorned such simplicities.

In this avowedly interpretative anthology of Irish verse, W.J. McCormack traces creativity of contradiction through several centuries, finding poets productively at odds with their forebears, their contemporaries--even with themselves. From Yeats's tragic laughter to the quieter ironies of Seamus Heaney, from the rambunctious narratives of Merriman and Joyce to the pathos of Wilde's "Reading Gaol," the same sparring spirit is found.

This exciting anthology brings together the very best in Irish poetry to reveal a broad yet sharply-focused tradition of diversity and dissidence. W.J. McCormack's compelling collection provokes a wide-ranging reconsideration of one of the world's richest literatures.

This collection, first published in 1982, brings together thirteen writers from a wide variety of critical traditions to take a fresh look at Joyce and his crucial position not only in English literature but in modern literature as a whole. Comparative views of his work include reflections on his relations to Shakespeare, Blake, MacDiarmid, and the Anglo-Irish revival. Essays, story and poems all combine to celebrate the major constituents of Joyce's work - his imagination and comedy, his exuberant use of language, his relation to the history of his country and his age, and his passionate commitment to 'a more veritably human tradition'. This title will be of interest to students of literature.

This collection, first published in 1982, brings together thirteen writers from a wide variety of critical traditions to take a fresh look at Joyce and his crucial position not only in English literature but in modern literature as a whole. Comparative views of his work include reflections on his relations to Shakespeare, Blake, MacDiarmid, and the Anglo-Irish revival. Essays, story and poems all combine to celebrate the major constituents of Joyce's work - his imagination and comedy, his exuberant use of language, his relation to the history of his country and his age, and his passionate commitment to 'a more veritably human tradition'. This title will be of interest to students of literature.

Debates about Irish culture have long been plagued by neat oppositions between conquering England and colonized Erin, Protestant and Catholic, stolid Saxon and dreamy Celt. Yet the greatest Irish poets have scorned such simplicities.

In this avowedly interpretative anthology of Irish verse, W.J. McCormack traces creativity of contradiction through several centuries, finding poets productively at odds with their forebears, their contemporaries--even with themselves. From Yeats's tragic laughter to the quieter ironies of Seamus Heaney, from the rambunctious narratives of Merriman and Joyce to the pathos of Wilde's "Reading Gaol," the same sparring spirit is found.

This exciting anthology brings together the very best in Irish poetry to reveal a broad yet sharply-focused tradition of diversity and dissidence. W.J. McCormack's compelling collection provokes a wide-ranging reconsideration of one of the world's richest literatures.

Roger Casement, the retired British consular official tried for treason and executed for securing German rifles to help the 1916 Rising in Ireland, has been a focus of controversy since the 1930s, with specific reference to the so-called Black diaries allegedly forged by British intelligence in c.1916. Forensic tests on the diaries commissioned by a committee chaired by W.J. McCormack have now shown that the diaries were written by Casement. This work is centred on W.J. Maloney, whose 1936 book, "The Forged Casement Diaries", brought the topic to the attention of the Irish public, and was part of an Irish-American campaign to influence the domestic politics of the Irish Free State. The book raises questions about intelligence work, archival engineering, IRA unofficial action, Nazi propaganda and new light is shed on major figures such as Eamon de Valera and W.B. Yeats, as well as on a cast of colourful bit players.

This, the first ever biography of John Hewitt, is based on archival material, both personal and literary. In many ways it is also a biography of his wife, Roberta (nee Black), whose manuscript journal is also in the public domain. To establish Hewitt's late arrival as a poet, the book opens with a chapter recounting his negotiations with a London publisher over a long period and the eventual appearance of No Rebel Word (1949). Successive chapters trace his education, courtship, literary apprenticeship, first employment as a junior gallery curator in Belfast, the political conflicts of the 1930s and then the War Years, his rejection for the post of director in Belfast's Civic Museum and Gallery, and his utopian commitment to regionalism. Appointment to the Herbert Gallery in Coventry in 1956 brought recognition and confidence. His leanings towards socialist realism came to accommodate abstract art, and he defended the sculptor Barbara Hepworth against the penny-pinching ratepayers. Throughout this two-part career, Hewitt maintained his output as poet, culminating in the Collected Poems (1968). His Irish political commitments never wavered, though he became cautious about forms of nationalism which proclaimed themselves left-wing. Roberta Hewitt's work for the Coventry Labour Party provided an outlet for her energies and her domestic frustrations. Throughout these forty years, the poetry is kept constantly in view, sometime by reference to individual pieces and their origins, and some by means of longer 'breaks for text' where more detailed criticism is practised. In 1972, the Hewitts returned to Belfast whenthe Troubles reached an ugly peak. Committed to anti-sectarianism, Hewitt withheld support from all parties, though he took an interest in trade union activity. Publishing (perhaps too much) poetry in his last decade-and-a-half, he died very much in harness.

The war of words between critics and writers is no paper conflict but affects daily life where literature and politics interact. The twentieth-century concern is nowhere more evident than in Ireland today where the growing 'Troubles' in Ulster gave critical debate particular focus. In this clear-eyed survey Bill McCormack assesses the alliances, the animosities, the factions, seeking to show the common ground they share even as they dispute its possession. In his analysis of individual writers, journals and larger enterprises, McCormack raises some unexpected possibilities: Is Conor Cruise O'Brien best understood as a Catholic mystic? Should Field Day be seen as a depoliticising force in Irish culture? What truly distinguishes the manoeuvres of Seamus Heaney, Terence Brown, Edna Longley and Denis Donhgue from each other? Have critics begun to learn from historians, or have historians begun to fight shy of culture? Is the British "Literary Left" imperialist? Is there a non-sectarian art? Underlying this polished and stimulating critique is a sombre awareness of literature's contribution to political malaise, and a call for an engagement with the real forces that govern people's lives.

W.B. Yeats went to great lengths to design his self-image which biographers have been slow to challenge. Following on from "Blood Kindred" (2005), Mc Cormack's new study of the poet's idealist views concentrates on the role of J.M. Hone in introducing him to George Berkeley's philosophy in the mid 1920s and to contemporary Italian thinkers such as Giovanni Gentile and Mario Manlio Rossi. The notion of sacrifice is examined and, by way of contrast, work by Synge, George Moore and Samuel Beckett is shown to challenge the demand for sacrifice which underlies many powerful philosophies of culture. This is a detailed and yet wide-ranging critique of twentieth-century Irish literature, illuminating both well-known and obscure figures.

"Michael Davitt: From the Gaelic American" tells the story of a collaboration between two giants of late nineteenth-century Irish nationalism: John Devoy and Michael Davitt, in the formulation of the New Departure and the early emergence of the land agitation. Devoy (1842-1928), a Fenian who assisted James Stephens in his escape from Richmond prison, only later to be imprisoned himself for administering the Fenian oath, was to spend most of his adult life in exile in the United States. He was a leading figure in Clan na Gael and a journalist for the "New York Herald" and later edited the "Gaelic American", in which this account of Davitt was serialised. Michael Davitt (1846-1906), once a major figure in the Irish Republican Brotherhood went on to found the Irish National Land League. Although both men shared similar hopes for the Irish nation their methods and approaches were to diverge, and they fell out in 1882. This memoir is particularly informative for the period between 1878 and 1880, when the New Departure was initiated. However, Devoy asserts that Davitt remained more loyal to the Fenian ideals than most of his contemporaries recognised.

Roger Casement, the retired British consular official tried for treason and executed for securing German rifles to help the 1916 Rising in Ireland, has been a focus of controversy since the 1930s, with specific reference to the so-called Black diaries allegedly forged by British intelligence in c.1916. Forensic tests on the diaries commissioned by a committee chaired by W.J. McCormack have now shown that the diaries were written by Casement. This work is centred on W.J. Maloney, whose 1936 book, "The Forged Casement Diaries", brought the topic to the attention of the Irish public, and was part of an Irish-American campaign to influence the domestic politics of the Irish Free State. The book raises questions about intelligence work, archival engineering, IRA unofficial action, Nazi propaganda and new light is shed on major figures such as Eamon de Valera and W.B. Yeats, as well as on a cast of colourful bit players.