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The Nobel Prize In Literature 1923: William Butler Yeats The Nobel Prize in Literature 1923 was awarded to William Butler Yeats "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation". View
The Nobel Prize In Literature 1925: George Bernard Shaw The Nobel Prize in Literature 1925 was awarded to George Bernard Shaw "for his work which is marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty". View
The Nobel Prize In Literature 1969: Samuel Beckett The Nobel Prize in Literature 1969 was awarded to Samuel Beckett "for his writing, which - in new forms for the novel and drama - in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". View
The Nobel Prize In Literature 1995: Seamus Heaney The Nobel Prize in Literature 1995 was awarded to Seamus Heaney "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past". View
Samuel Beckett On-Line Resources "The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the shit the more I am grateful to him. He’s not f---ing me about, he’s not leading me up any garden path, he’s not slipping me a wink, he’s not flogging me a remedy or a path or a revelation or a basinful of breadcrumbs, he’s not selling me anything I don’t want to buy — he doesn’t give a bollock whether I buy or not — he hasn’t got his hand over his heart. Well, I’ll buy his goods, hook, line and sinker, because he leaves no stone unturned and no maggot lonely. He brings forth a body of beauty." View
Eavan Boland, Poets.org "Eavan Boland was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1944. Her father was a diplomat and her mother was an expressionist painter. At the age of six, Boland and her family relocated to London, where she first encountered anti-Irish sentiment. She later returned to Dublin for school, and she received her B.A. from Trinity College in 1966. She was also educated in London and New York." View
Brian Friel: Dancing At Lughnasa Umea Universitet's Brian Friel page, highlighting notes on "Dancing At Lughnasa". View
Seamus Heaney, "To Set The Darkness Echoing" Irish poet Dennis O'Driscoll talks with Seamus Heaney to the Guardian. View
BBC Four Audio Interviews, Seamus Heaney "Heaney was born in County Derry, Northern Ireland, the eldest of 9 children and son of a Catholic farmer. Educated at Queen's College, Belfast, he became a lecturer in English literature at the university in 1966, when he also published his first collection of poems, Death of a Naturalist. The opening lines of the first poem of this acclaimed collection, Digging, prefigure the tension that energises so much of Heaney's work: a tension between art and life, past and present, violent action and peaceful contemplation." View
The Patrick Kavanagh Centre The Patrick Kavanagh Web site is dedicated to the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh. This site provides information on the poet, his birth place of Inniskeen Co. Monaghan, the area today, the Patrick Kavanagh Centre, and there is an online book shop where you can buy Patrick Kavanagh's poetry and prose. View
Edna O'Brien Interview Edna O'Brien talks about her admiration for Joyce, the importance of myth, and how her new book, Wild Decembers - in which heartache is prefigured by a tractor - fits in with her own "inner gnaw". View
Brian O'Nolan Some excerpts of his work and some relevant articles. View
The Life & Works of William Butler Yeats The Life & Works of William Butler Yeats at the National Library of Ireland. View
Yeats Society, Co. Sligo The Yeats Society was founded in Sligo in 1958 in order to commemorate and honour the memory of W.B. Yeats, and to promote appreciation of his poetry and other writings, and an awareness of the other members of this talented family. View
Niall Williams In 1985 Niall Williams and Christine Breen moved from New York to a small cottage in the west of Ireland. Their popular book O Come Ye Back to Ireland was the story of their first year's adventures, and they've been living there and writing ever since. View
Colm Toibin Colm Toibin was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford in 1955. He studied at University College Dublin and lived in Barcelona between 1975 and 1978. Out of his experience in Barcelona be produced two books, the novel ‘The South’ (shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and winner of the Irish Times/ Aer Lingus First Fiction Award) and ‘Homage to Barcelona’, both published in 1990. When he returned to Ireland in 1978 he worked as a journalist for ‘In Dublin’, ‘Hibernia’ and ‘The Sunday Tribune’, becoming features editor of ‘In Dublin’ in 1981 and editor of Magill, Ireland’s current affairs magazine, in 1982. View
Oscar Wilde, Official Webpage Oscar Wilde's rich and dramatic portrayals of the human condition came during the height of the Victorian Era that swept through London in the late 19th century. At a time when all citizens of Britain were finally able to embrace literature the wealthy and educated could only once afford, Wilde wrote many short stories, plays and poems that continue to inspire millions around the world. View
Liam O'Flaherty Biography "I was born on a storm-swept rock and hate the soft growth of sunbaked lands where there is no frost in men's bones. Swift thought and the flight of ravenous birds,and the squeal of hunted animals are to me reality." View
Ernie O'Malley & Achill Island Ernie O'Malley was born in Ellison Street, Castlebar, Co. Mayo in 1897. One of eleven children, Ernie and his brothers and sisters would spend most summers at the O'Malley family's rented house near Rosbeg, Westport, from where he would explore the area around Clew Bay, a wide bay that runs out to Clare Island and Achill Island on its northern shore. View
The Story Of Oscar Wilde, The First Modern Man "Wilde" is a film about the life of Oscar Wilde, the first modern man, with Wilde being played by British actor, Stephen Fry. View
J. M. Synge & Achill Island John Millington Synge (1871-1909), the writer and playwright, epitomises the trend among artists and writers at the turn of the 20th century to look to the west of Ireland for inspiration and for an 'authentically' Irish subject matter. It was a trend that also saw the artist Paul Henry and his painter wife Grace travel to Achill Island in 1909 and, some decades later, was part of the attraction of his Mayo homeland for writer Ernie O'Malley. Both Paul Henry and Ernie O'Malley were readers of JM Synge, as was the English novelist Graham Greene before he travelled to Achill in 1947. View
Flann O'Brien: A Biographical Introduction Sodden with whisky, the elder Flann O'Brien struggled to keep his writing in tune with his preternaturally subtle ear. His first great novel At Swim-Two-Birds and a long-standing column in the Irish Times had long established hims as the prime wit of a generation of Dublin intellectuals disillusioned by the sham romanticism that clung to Irish letters after the Celtic Revival. As a comedian of the learned, O'Brien's humor was more bookish than pedestrian, more ironic than patriotic. Along with an ambiguous dedication to the tenets of High Modernism, O'Brien's best work showed a creative imagination torn between Roman Catholicism on the one hand, and a corrosive, almost nihilistic cynicism on the other. View
G. Bernard Shaw: A Brief Biography G. Bernard Shaw (he hated the "George" and never used it, either personally or professionally) was born in 1856 in Dublin, in a lower-middle class family of Scottish-Protestant ancestry. His father was a failed corn-merchant, with a drinking problem and a squint (which Oscar Wilde's father, a leading Dublin surgeon, tried unsuccessfully to correct); his mother was a professional singer, the sole disciple of Vandeleur Lee, a voice teacher claiming to have a unique and original approach to singing. View
Bram Stoker's Notes For Dracula Until now, fewer than 15 of the 124 pages of Stoker’s Dracula Notes, located at the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia, have been published. Now, all 124 pages are available. These Notes were auctioned at Sotheby’s in London in 1913 and eventually made their way to the Rosenbach. View
Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin (May 1780 Killarney, County Kerry-1838 Callan, County Kilkenny) was an Irish language author, linen draper, politician, and one time hedge school master. He is also known as Humphrey O'Sullivan. He was deeply involved in Daniel O'Connell's Catholic Emancipation movement and in relief work among the poor of County Kilkenny. He was also an avid bird watcher and a collector of rare manuscripts in the Irish language. View
The Trials Of Oscar Wilde Old Bailey, the main courthouse in London, had never presented a show quite like the three trials that captivated England and much of the literary world in the spring of 1895. Celebrity, sex, witty dialogue, political intrique, surprising twists, and important issues of art and morality--is it any surprise that the trials of Oscar Wilde continue to fascinate one hundred years after the death of one of Ireland's greatest authors and playrights? View