“A mountain paradise, yet silent and lonesome, somewhat strange, for all its sweetness of flower and of friend, not friendly . . . ” –

“The Blanket Fiend” (1929)

Beatrice Grimshaw (1870-1953) was born in Dunmurry, Co. Antrim on 3 February 1870. Though raised in Northern Ireland, and educated in France, Grimshaw is primarily associated with Australia and the South Seas, which she wrote about in her fiction and travel journalism. She was a devoted (and record-breaking) cyclist, and during the 1890s wrote for the Dublin-based magazines Irish Cyclist and Social Review. In 1904 Grimshaw was commissioned by London’s Daily Graphic to report on the Pacific islands, around which she purportedly sailed her own cutter, never to return to Europe again. Her travel writing includes From Fiji to the Cannibal Islands (1907) and In the Strange South Seas (1908); her most popular novels are When Red Gods Call (1911) and The Sorcerer’s Stone (1914); while collections such as The Valley of Never-Come-Back (1923) and The Beach of Terror (1931) feature some of her supernatural stories. After living much of her life in New Guinea, Grimshaw retired to New South Wales, where she died on 30 June 1953.

Read Beatrice Grimshaw on Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/46026

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“In Ireland anything may happen to anyone anywhere and at any time, and it usually does.” –

“The Unfortunate Fursey” (1946)

Mervyn Wall (1908-1997) was born in Rathmines, Dublin. He was educated in Belvedere College; Bonn, Germany; and the National University of Ireland where he obtained his B.A. in 1928. After fourteen years in the Civil Service, he joined Radio Éireann as Programme Officer. In 1957 he left Radio Éireann to become Secretary of the Arts Council of Ireland, a position he held until 1975. Widely known during his lifetime as a broadcaster and critic, he is best remembered now for his plays and novels, among them two satirical fantasies set in medieval Ireland, The Unfortunate Fursey (1946) and The Return of Fursey (1948). His book Leaves for the Burning won Denmark’s Best European Novel award in 1952.

Writings by Mervyn Wall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mervyn_Wall#Writings

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“Up and down the streets I wandered till dawn grew gray, but no dawn arose in my heart, only black night for ever.” –

“Transmigration” (1900)

Dora Sigerson Shorter (1866-1918) was born in Clare Street, Dublin. Both of her parents were writers—her father was the noted surgeon and poet George Sigerson (1836-1925). In 1895 she married the English literary critic Clement King Shorter and relocated to London. Early in her career she contributed to magazines such as Irish Monthly and Samhain, and became friendly with the political activist Alice Furlong and the author Katharine Tynan. Shorter’s volumes of poetry include The Fairy Changeling (1897), Love of Ireland (1916), and the posthumously published Sixteen Dead Men and Other Poems of Easter Week (1919). Shorter died in St. John’s Woods, London, on 6 January 1918; Tynan later wrote that she “died of a broken heart” which she attributed to the 1916 executions. Although chiefly known for her poetry (and to a lesser extent as a sculptor) Shorter also wrote prose, including sketches collected in The Father Confessor: Stories of Danger and Death (1900). She is now regarded as a significant poet of the Irish Literary Revival.

Read Dora Sigerson Shorter at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/3072

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“In her once familiar street, as in any unused channel, an unfamiliar queerness had silted up; a cat wove itself in and out of railings, but no human eye watched Mrs. Drover’s return.” –

“The Demon Lover” (1941)

Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) was born in Dublin. In 1930 she inherited the family estate in Bowen Court, in Co. Cork, where she entertained the likes of Virginia Woolf and Eudora Welty. Her novels, non-fiction, and short stories—such as those in The Cat Jumps and Other Stories (1934) and The Demon Lover and Other Stories (1945)—continue to be read and appreciated today. Her ghostly fiction, which made regular appearances in the anthologies of Cynthia Asquith, is akin to that of Henry James in its psychological probity, but briefer, wittier, and more ironic, with a streak of feline cruelty.

Selected Works by Elizabeth Bowen are listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bowen#Selected_works

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“One bleak night in autumn a sound outside drew him to the door, and opening it, he stood listening.” –

“The Wee Gray Woman” (1903)

Ethna Carbery (1866-1902) was the pen name of journalist, writer, poet, and patriot Anna MacManus. She was born Anna Bella Johnston in Ballymena, Co. Antrim on 3 December 1866, and started publishing poems and short stories in Irish periodicals at the age of fifteen. She was one of the co-founders of the Daughters of Ireland, a radical nationalist women’s organisation led by Maud Gonne. With the poet and writer Alice Milligan, Carbery published two nationalist periodicals, The Northern Patriot and The Shan Van Vocht, the latter considered a major contribution to the Irish literary revival. In 1901 she married poet and folklorist Séumas MacManus, though the marriage was short-lived. Carbery died at the age of thirty-five in Donegal on 2 April 1902. After her death, her husband published three volumes of her work: a book of poetry, The Four Winds of Eirinn (1902); and two short story collections, The Passionate Hearts (1903), and In the Celtic Past (1904).

Works by Ethna Carbery:
The Four Winds of Eirinn (1902) – poems
The Passionate Hearts (1903) – stories
In the Celtic Past (1904) – hero tales
We Sang for Ireland: Poems of Ethna Carbery, Séamus MacManus, Alice Milligan (1950) – poetry

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“If ever they remembered their life in this world it was as one remembers a dream.” –

“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” (1950)

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) is widely considered a titan of twentieth-century fantasy, due largely to his “Chronicles of Narnia” novels (1950-56), which commenced with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Though born in Belfast, Lewis is more often associated with Oxford, where he joined the Magdalen College English faculty, and associated with J. R. R. Tolkien and other members of the Inklings literary group. Lewis also explored science fiction in his “Space Trilogy” novels (1938-45), while Christian themes permeate works such as The Screwtape Letters (1942). Lewis is buried at Holy Trinity Church in Headington, Oxford.

There is only one book by C. S. Lewis at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/782

A list of Lewis’s books can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis_bibliography

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“Only the dead are faithful to Love—because they are dead,” she said. “The living live on—and forget!”
– A Vanished Hand (1914)

Clotilde Graves (1863-1932) was born in the Buttevant Barracks, Co. Cork on 3 June 1863. At the age of nine, Graves’s family moved to England. She worked briefly in the British Museum while studying at the Royal Female School of Art in Bloomsbury. Often unconventional and uncompromising, Graves adopted male dress and smoked in public, both frowned upon at the time. With the intention of becoming a playwright, Graves worked as a travelling actor to learn the craft. This she did, and between 1887 and 1913 she had sixteen plays produced in London and New York. Under the pen-name “Richard Dehan”, used to differentiate from her dramatic output, she also wrote historical novels as well as stories for periodicals such as Gentlewoman, World, and Judy. Graves retired in 1928 to a convent in Hatch End, Middlesex, where she died on 3 December 1932. Her short story collections include The Cost of Wings (1914), Off Sandy Hook (1915), Under the Hermés (1917), and The Eve of Pascua (1920).

Read Clotilde Graves (Richard Dehan) at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/33039

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“It would be strange, indeed, if the vigour and content of the living could not banish the lingering sorrows of the dead.”
– The Uninvited (1941)

Dorothy Macardle—historian, playwright, journalist, and novelist—was born in Dundalk, Co. Louth. She was educated at Alexandra College in Dublin where she later lectured in English literature. She is best remembered for her seminal treatise on Ireland’s struggle for independence, The Irish Republic (1937), but also wrote novels of the uncanny, including The Uninvited (1941), The Unforeseen (1946), and Dark Enchantment (1953). She died in Drogheda and is buried in St. Fintan’s Cemetery, Sutton.

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“Any whose business brought them to the attic looked in the corners warily, while they stayed, but the servants did not like to go there alone.”
– “The First Wife” (1895)

Katherine Tynan (1859-1931) was born in South Richmond Street, Dublin on 23 January 1859. She was raised in Whitehall, the family home in Clondalkin. Her literary salon there attracted notables such as the mystical poet A.E. and W. B. Yeats, the latter with whom she formed a lifelong friendship. With encouragement from Rosa Mulholland, Tynan became a prolific writer, authoring more than a hundred novels in addition to memoirs, journalism, numerous volumes of poetry, and a tribute to her friend Dora Sigerson Shorter in The Sad Years (1918). Her works deal with nationalism, feminism, and Catholicism—Yeats declared of her early collection Shamrocks (1887) that “in finding her nationality, she has also found herself”. Tynan died in Wimbledon, London on 2 April 1931. Her short stories, often featuring sketches of Irish life, can be found in An Isle in the Water (1895), Men and Maids (1908), and Lovers’ Meeting (1914).

Read Katherine Tynan at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/7598

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“He called to it and said, ‘Tell me what you are?’ ”
– “The Unquiet Dead” (1920)

Lady Augusta Gregory (1852-1932), noted folklorist and playwright, was born Isabella Augusta Persse to a wealthy Anglo-Irish family in Co. Galway on 15 March 1852. In 1880 she married Sir William Henry Gregory, former Member of Parliament and once-governor of Ceylon. After Sir William’s death in 1892, Lady Gregory started collecting Irish legends and folklore, a lifelong interest that took form as Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902), Gods and Fighting Men (1904), A Book of Saints and Wonders (1906), and Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (1920). She was a friend and collaborator of W. B. Yeats, with whom she co-founded the Abbey Theatre in 1904. She also wrote a number of plays, mainly comedies and fantasies inspired by Irish myths. After stepping down as director of the Abbey Theatre in 1928, she retired to her family residence at Coole Park, where she did on 22 May 1932. She is today remembered as one of the leading lights of the Celtic Revival.

Read Lady Augusta Gregory at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/4092

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