If one wishes to count in decades, the 1920s was surely the greatest single decade in Irish writing in English. Photograph: RDImages/Epics/GettyThe collective contribution these writers – Irish and Irish-American – made to the arts of modern poetry, fiction and theatre in a single decade is immense. Still, if the 1920s was a glorious literary decade, changes soon to come would irrevocably alter Irish writing and literary production generally. Looking back on Irish writing in the 1920s, two obvious things stand out: how male that world was and how Protestant. For all the attention, nationally and internationally, lavished recently on Rooney, what her Marxism might mean for Irish writing today has generated little comment.

Source: The Irish Times July 07, 2020 04:00 UTC