A History of Irish Working-Class Writing

A History of Irish Working-Class Writing provides a wide-ranging and authoritative chronicle of the writing of Irish working-class experience. Ground-breaking in scholarship and comprehensive in scope, it is a major intervention in Irish Studies scholarship, charting representations of Irish working-class life from eighteenth-century rhymes and songs to the novels, plays and poetry of working-class experience in contemporary Ireland. There are few narrative accounts of Irish radicalism, and even fewer that engage 'history from below'. This book provides original insights in these relatively untilled fields. Exploring workers' experiences in various literary forms, from early to late capitalism, the twenty-two chapters make this book an authoritative and substantial contribution to Irish studies and English literary studies generally.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Declan Kiberd; Introduction Michael Pierse; 1. Writing and theorising the Irish working class David Convery; 2. Representing labour: notes towards a political and cultural economy of Irish working-class experience Christopher J. V. Loughlin; 3. Working-class writing in Ireland before 1800: 'some must be poor – we cannot all be great' Andrew Carpenter; 4. 'We wove our ain wab': the Ulster Weaver poets' working lives, myths and afterlives Frank Ferguson; 5. Sub-literatures?: Folk song, memory and Ireland's working poor John Moulden; 6. Writing working-class Irish women Heather Laird; 7. 'Unwriting' the city: narrating class in early twentieth-century Belfast and Dublin (1900–1929) Elizabeth Mannion; 8. Class during the Irish revolution: British soldiers, 1916, and the abject body James Moran; 9. 'An sinne a bhí sa chónra?' – Writing death on the margins in twentieth-century Irish working-class writing Michael Pierse; 10. Writing Irish nurses in Britain Tony Muray; 11. The view from below: solidarity and struggle in Irish-American working-class literature Margaret Hallissy and John Lutz; 12. Irish working-class writing in Australasia, 1860–1960: contrasts and comparisons Peter Kuch; 13. Irish working-class poetry 1900–1960 Niall Carson; 14. 'A system that inflicts suffering upon the many' Paul Delaney; 15. Drama, 1900–1950 Paul Murphy; 16. Seán O'Casey and Brendan Behan: aesthetics, democracy, and the voice of labour John Brannigan; 17. Reshaping well-worn genres: novels of progress and precarity 1960–1998 Mary McGlynn; 18. Locked out: working-class lives in Irish drama 1958–1998 Victor Merriman; 19. Poetry and the working class in Northern Ireland during the troubles Adam Hanna; 20. Class politics and performance in troubles drama: 'history isn't over yet' Mark Phelan; 21. Twentieth-century workers' biography Claire Lynch; 22. Multiple class consciousnesses in writings for theatre during the Celtic Tiger Era Eamonn Jordan; Afterword overdue: the recovery and study of Irish working-class writing, an international perspective H. Gustav Klaus.

About the Author :
Michael Pierse is a lecturer in Irish Literature at Queen's University Belfast. His research mainly explores the writing and cultural production of Irish working-class life. Over recent years this work has expanded into new multi-disciplinary themes and international contexts, including the study of festivals, digital methodologies in public humanities, and theatre-as-research practices. Michael has contributed to a range of national and international publications, is author of Writing Ireland's Working-Class: Dublin After O'Casey (2011), has been awarded several Arts and Humanities Research Council awards and the Vice Chancellor's Award at Queen's University Belfast.

Review :
'Pierse's colossal undertaking restores a lot of these voices and narratives to their rightful context within Ireland's literature.' Dermot Bolger, The Irish Times '[A] labyrinthine compendium of essays … this book provocatively attacks the silence of the establishment while proclaiming that practitioners of the genre make do, hopefully survive, and work on. Working-class writers of the world, unite!' Kevin Kiely, Books Ireland 'Capitalising on recent examples of historiography, labour, social and political history and the relationships between Irish Studies and class, this innovative and pioneering volume establishes new areas of scholarly debate that will inform research for decades to come. … The debates present are original, well-conceived and, as Kiberd notes in the 'Foreword', '[t]hey will set many of the terms of cultural debate in the decades to come. And they could hardly be more timely.' Robert Finnigan, Irish Studies Review 'Michael Pierse has done a great service to Irish studies in editing this first comprehensive examination of Irish working-class writing. A real joy of reading this volume is the nuanced and stimulating social analyses alongside literary readings, showing how reading outside the national framework opens up striking new ways of reading the fabric of the nation itself.' Muireann Leech, Biography