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Damze36
06-01-2012, 04:32 PM
I'm interested in anything having to do with Ireland. So naturally I want more literature involving Ireland. So any literature involving Ireland, Irish characters, from Irish authors I want. Any recommendations? I already have Ulysses.
dfloyd
06-01-2012, 05:07 PM
easier to understand. Try Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners. Oscar Wilde is one of most famous of Irish authors. Try the Crock of Gold bf James Stephans. Anything by Flannery O'Cconor.
Mutatis-Mutandis
06-01-2012, 06:43 PM
W.B. Yeats.
Pierre Menard
06-01-2012, 06:46 PM
Yeats, Beckett, Joyce and Wilde are the big 4.
Mutatis-Mutandis
06-01-2012, 06:48 PM
It's funny, I didn't even know Wilde was Irish. I always thought he was English, for some reason.
Charles Darnay
06-01-2012, 07:05 PM
The Tain. Ulster's national epic.
OrphanPip
06-01-2012, 07:16 PM
It's funny, I didn't even know Wilde was Irish. I always thought he was English, for some reason.

He was Anglo-Irish like Yeats, born in Ireland to a family of English extraction.

George Bernard Shaw was Irish as well.

Edit: For more contemporary literature, I don't mind Roddy Doyle, his novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha HA is a good short read.
Dark Muse
06-01-2012, 07:34 PM
Morgan Llywelyn is Irish-American writes Historical Fiction that is focused upon Irish culture, history, myth and lore.
Damze36
06-01-2012, 07:40 PM
Well thanks everyone for the interesting recommendations. Now to find and read them! Once I get them I'm sure they'll keep me busy for a few weeks maybe :)
dfloyd
06-01-2012, 07:43 PM
George Bernard Shaw down to Frank McCourt; there have been so many great Irish writers that one could fill pages with their names and works.
AuntShecky
06-02-2012, 03:02 PM
It took me a while to find the link, but here's a short essay on some
diverse Irish short stories:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67989
Damze36
06-02-2012, 03:30 PM
Thanks for the link :)
Desolation
06-02-2012, 05:45 PM
At Swim - Two - Birds by Flann O'Brien is brilliant.

Laurence Stern is also, if I remember correctly, of Irish origins.
nancybella
06-05-2012, 04:32 PM
Fyodor Joyce and Peig Tolstoy are the two Irish greats, along with George Bernard Chekhov of course. There's too many to mention, really. And you can't leave out John Yeats or Edgar Allan Kavanagh. That should keep you going, my friend - enjoy! :-)
Atomic
06-05-2012, 04:43 PM
Elizabeth Bowen
nancybella
06-05-2012, 05:46 PM
There's a very under-appreciated story by a leprechaun about a rainbow and a pot of mould. He's an anonymous leprechaun, just like the unknown soldier, but he was a great little writer.
Der Wegwerfer
06-06-2012, 10:41 PM
regarding more modern Irish authors William Trevor writes great short stories and Colm Toibin is quite elegant as well.

Trevor writes more directly about Irish experiences though.
Venerable Bede
06-07-2012, 10:01 PM
Swift was Irish too. I think a lot of people find his work boring, but I actually enjoyed Gulliver's Travels.
crusoe
07-16-2012, 10:22 AM
Charles Maturin...he wrote MELMOTH THE WANDERER...a MUST for Gothic-Afficionados
Sheridan Le Fanu...need I say more ?
Bram Stoker...The count is biting again

The Irish are maybe the most gifted when it comes to "spinning a strange yarn"
Samsa
07-17-2012, 09:22 PM
Swift was Irish too. I think a lot of people find his work boring, but I actually enjoyed Gulliver's Travels.

Really? I've only read 'Gulliver's Travels' and 'A Modest Proposal' but I thought that they were both excellent and assumed that most people felt the same.

Anyway, it seems to me that the OP is asking about literature that's about Ireland and Irish culture, not just authors that happen to be from Ireland.
I'd suggest J.M. Synge's 'The Playboy of the Western World'. It's a play about Irish rural peasants, so the language is very coloquial and as a result it feels very 'Irish'. In its day it was so controversial that there were riots both during and after performances!