The Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel
(Edited by John Wilson Foster; Cambridge, 2006)
The Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel
(Edited by John Wilson Foster; Cambridge, 2006)
The Irish novel has had a distinguished history. It spans such diverse authors as James Joyce, George Moore, Maria Edgeworth, Bram Stoker, Flann O'Brien, Samuel Beckett, Lady Morgan, John Banville, and others. Yet it has until now received less critical attention than Irish poetry and drama.
This volume covers three hundred years of Irish achievement in fiction, with essays on key genres, themes, and authors. It provides critiques of individual works, accounts of important novelists, and histories of sub-genres and allied narrative forms, establishing significant social and political contexts for dozens of novels. The varied perspectives and emphases by more than a dozen critics and literary historians ensure that the Irish novel receives due tribute for its colour, variety and linguistic verve. Each chapter features recommended further reading.
This is the perfect overview for students of the Irish novel from the romances of the seventeenth century to the present day.
The Nabob: A Tale of Ninety-Eight
By Andrew James
With Notes and Afterword by John Wilson Foster
(Dublin, 2006)
The Nabob: A Tale of Ninety-Eight
By Andrew James
With Notes and Afterword by John Wilson Foster
(Dublin, 2006)
Republication of an overlooked 1911 set of spine-tingling gothic tales by Andrew James (J.A. Strahan) about the 1798 United Irishman rebellion in County Antrim, originally entitled Ninety-Eight and Sixty Years After, and told in vernacular Scots as well as English. The novel had a disturbing contemporary resonance because it was written during the Irish Home Rule crisis and today accrues an added resonance because of the Northern Irish “Troubles”, 1969-1998. “Strahan’s Antrim narrators are unreliable, his countryside is haunted and its houses are sites for terror, secrets and unquiet graves.”
“This is a welcome addition to the stock of novels about ’98 and the polemic concerning Ulster’s role in the United Kingdom and the British Empire. It is, as Foster claims, a rattling good read”.
- Frank Ferguson, Irish Economic and Social History
The Idea of the Union: Statements & Critiques
(Edited by John Wilson Foster; Vancouver, 1995)
The Idea of the Union: Statements & Critiques
(Edited by John Wilson Foster; Vancouver, 1995)
A spirited intervention in the heated political and cultural debates of the 1980s and 1990s, this lively and engaged group of essays lays out political, social, cultural and economic reasons for maintaining the constitutional status quo, the union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. While affirming Irishness, it defines unionism as centrally cultural. Among the seasoned contributing commentators and scholars are Dennis Kennedy, Arthur Aughey, Robert McCartney, Graham Walker, Barbara Finney, Arthur Green, Esmond Birnie, Paddy Roche, Richard English and Graham Gudgin. The editor contributes three essays of his own.
“The superior intellectual strength of Unionism is pointed up powerfully by a recent pamphlet, The Idea of the Union.”
- Eoghan Harris, The Sunday Times
The Poets' Place: Ulster Literature & Society
(Co-edited with Gerald Dawe; Belfast, 1991
The Poets' Place: Ulster Literature & Society
(Co-edited with Gerald Dawe; Belfast, 1991
An impressive array of essays dedicated to the memory of John Hewitt, one of Ireland’s finest poets and critics, and originally offered as talks to the Summer School instituted in Hewitt’s honour. The essayists range widely in time and space across culture and literature in the north of Ireland Contributors: George Watson, Cahal Dallat, Martyn Anglesea, Kevin Whelan, Ivan Herbison, Adrian Rice, Eve Patten, Gréagóir Ó Dúill, John Wilson Foster, Timothy Collins, R.H. Buchanan, Caoimhin Mac Giolla Léith, Roy McFadden, Sophia Hillan King, Peter McDonald, Gerald Dawe, Patricia Craig, Geraldine Watts, Tom Clyde, Anthony Buckley, Paul Arthur, Bernard Crick and Terence Brown.
Chapter 9: John Wilson Foster: “Natural History, Science and Irish Culture”
The Cambridge History of Irish Literature
(edited by Margaret Kelleher and Philip O'Leary; Cambridge, 2006)
The Cambridge History of Irish Literature
(edited by Margaret Kelleher and Philip O'Leary; Cambridge, 2006)
This is the first comprehensive history of Irish literature in both its major languages. The twenty-eight chapters in this two-volume history provide an authoritative chronological survey of the Irish literary tradition, both in Irish and English. Spanning fifteen centuries of literary achievement, the two volumes range from the earliest medieval Latin texts to the late twentieth century. The contributors, drawn from a range of Irish, British and North American universities, are internationally renowned experts in their fields.
No critical work of this scale has been attempted for Irish literature before. Featuring a detailed chronology and guides to further reading for each chapter, this magisterial project will remain the key reference book for literature in Ireland for generations to come.
Volume II: 1890-2000: John Wilson Foster, “The Irish Renaissance, 1890-1940: Prose in English”
Essays & Articles
Essays & Articles
John Wilson Foster has a number of essays & articles that are available online. Below is just a selection.
An Angry Wind
An Angry Wind
"An Angry Wind": Review essay on Adrian Frazier's biography, The Adulterous Muse: Maud Gonne, Lucien Millevoye and W.B. Yeats, in Dublin Review of Books, April 2017.