The Fleeting Fingers of Irish Writers,

Make my Irish Eyes Smile

     

Oscar Wilde

                                 I step off a Dublin city bus, practically at the front door of a stately 18th century mansion at 18 Parnell Square. It is the home of the Dublin Writers Museum. Here is housed a presentation of Irish literary history and tradition through the books, portraits, letters, and memorabilia of about 300 years of Irish writers. I join the ranks of other English majors (this English major is 22% Irish per Ancestry.com) who have passed through this door. I can't wait to get inside.

William Butler Yeats

The guy here to the left, W.B. Yeats, in 1923, was the first Irishman to receive a Nobel Prize for Literature. He was a poet, dramatist, prose writer and heralded as one of the greatest English language poets of the 20th century. I call him "a writer's writer". He wrote everything, extremely prolific--fiction, non-fiction, plays, short stories, and a tremendous amount of poetry. Then in his spare time he was a co-founder of Ireland's National Theatre--The Abbey Theatre. He did it all. That's why I call him "a writer's writer".

George Bernard Shaw

During his life, Shaw wrote sixty plays, also novels, and essays. In 1925, he received the Nobel in Literature. In addition, some may not know that in 1938 he won an Academy Award for his work on Pygmalion, an adaptation of his play of the same name.

I have always been a Shaw fan and have seen productions of several of his plays: Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island (this is the first play he wrote), Peace in Our Time, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Arms of the Man, Caesar and Cleopatra, The Philanderer. 

James Joyce

James Joyce was a novelist, short story writer, and a poet.

He is best known for Ulysses, which I have to admit, I've never read. He used a stream of consciousness technique with this work, a narrative attempting to cover many thoughts and feelings in the mind. I opted to read Dubliners, a collection of short stories, in which some of the characters actually appear in Ulysses. It was released in 1914, a work depicting Irish middle class life at  the peak of Irish nationalism. 

Frank McCourt

In 1930, Frank McCourt was born of Irish parents in Brooklyn. During the Depression, the family moved back to Ireland where they met even harder times. Here Frank stayed until he was 19, when he moved back to America. He served in the Korean War and attended college on his GI Bill majoring in English.He was both a teacher and writer, teaching in many schools in New York. 

He is well known for his 1996 memoir, Angela's Ashes, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. Angela was his mother. He went on to write a follow-up, ' Tis, and later Teacher Man, about his teaching life.




These are just highlights of the museum. It is important to note that there are two more 
Irish writers who are Nobel Laureates--Samuel Beckett in 1969 and Seamus Heaney in 1995.

This is also a good time for me to thank and recognize
my Guide through Ireland, the knowledgeable, vivacious, 
and never boring, Kate. She is also a student at the
University of Cork. I'm glad I had an opportunity to
meet and come to know her! I wish her the best in her 
pursuits at university.