About this Book

"First published in 1995, this is a journey around Ireland's literary landscape. Elizabeth Healy has travelled twenty routes on her all-Ireland circuit. Visiting monastery and mountain range, holy well and mansion house, the hidden Ireland and its public face, she leads us from Synge's Wicklow and O'Connor's Cork through Kerry's old and new traditions, all along the western seaboard, out to Liam O'Flaherty's Aran islands. Rekindling the lyric mood with Yeats at Knocknarea, the reader will discover the Donegal of Peader O'Donnell, Derry of the playwrights, Heaney's Mossbawn, Ben Kiely's Tyrone. Via Belfast into Antrim's glens in the company of the Brontes, Macneice, Hewitt, Carson - a host of voices; and reenact the tale of The Tain. The youthful villages of Goldsmith, Lavin, Kavanagh, Edgeworth, McGahern and others prepare us for Dublin's myriads of literary streets and fictions. With Wilde, Shaw and Swift, Ocasy, Joyce and Beckett - pouring words upon cityscapes, and finally entering the Liffey to complete the journey" .- Prové de l'editor.