British & Irish History

Some of the most famous names in the history of literature written in English were born and lived in Dublin or had close connections with the city, from Jonathan Swift...

A delightful autobiographical novel from one of Ireland's best-loved writers My part of Ireland had a poet at one time, a poor ragged fellow whom no respectable person whom no...

A beautifully illustrated reference to Shakespeare and his time. Four centuries after he penned them, Shakespeare's plays continue to delight audiences and readers worldwide. Shakespeare: The Essential Guide to the...

Dr Victoria Stewart considers the social and political situation into which O'Casey was born and traces the path which led him to an association with theatre in the early 1920s...

The collection includes famous poems such as Yeats's "The Fisherman" and Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" alongside new work from Ireland's finest living writers. As well as forming a...

Intensely private, possibly saintly, but perhaps misanthropic, Samuel Beckett was the most legendary and enigmatic of writers. Anthony Cronin's biography is a revelation of this mythical figure as fully human...

The acclaimed first volume of this definitive biography of W. B. Yeats left him in his fiftieth year, at a cross-roads in his life. The subsequent quarter-century surveyed in The...

My Left Foot is Christy Brown's inspirational story of his early life, his battle against the restraints of cerebral palsy and his determination to learn to read, write, and paint,...

Since the success of "Philadelphia, Here I Come!" in 1964, Brian Friel has written over twenty plays, successively confirming his reputation as a major dramatist of the twentieth century. But...

A spirited and essential companion to Orwell and his works, covering all the novels and major essays An intellectual who hated intellectuals, a socialist who didn't trust the state-our foremost...

Uncovering the hidden love triangle between novelist Elizabeth Bowen and the author's grandparents - the critically acclaimed biography with never-before-seen letters detailing the affair. For readers who were swept up...

"Penguin Illustrated Lives" is a series of photographic biographies that offers a fresh, intimate portrait of some of our favourite writers. An incisive, lively text is accompanied by over 100...

Sean O' Casey's Irish plays, among them "Juno and the Paycock", arguably place him amongst the great playwrights of the 20th century. This book explores the myth of O'Casey's slum...

This is an investigation of Yeats's experiments with the media of language and dance in his plays. He was allied to other artists of the 1890s in his fascination with...

Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in rural Ireland. The similarities end there; they are from very different worlds. When they both earn places at Trinity...

In this biography of W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) the author shows him through a life of tumultuous creativity through which he strove to bring new meaning to poetry, vision and politics....