Search results for ""author augustine martin""

Written over 30 years, these essays range over the field of Anglo-Irish literature from Yeats, Joyce and Synge through Patrick Kavanagh and Mary Lavin to Brendan Kennelly and Eavan Boland.

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Difficult as it may be in understand today, the Exploring English anthology of short stories was revolutionary when first published forty four years ago in 1967. For the first time the short story was to be taught as part of the English syllabus for the Intermediate Certificate. For the first time students of English were introduced to the work of Irish writers such as Liam O’Flaherty, Frank O’Connor, Sean O Faolain, Mary Lavin, Brian Friel and Benedict Kiely. Exploring English has resonated with countless thousands of Irish students. For many it provided a gateway to a life time of reading and enjoyment of literature. For even more it was an icon of their school days with its unmistakeable angular cover design. It is still a cherished possession in many households, taken out occasionally and nostalgically to read a story or two and perhaps even the accompanying notes which were so enlightening for some yet challenging for others. The Exploring English short story anthology is now being republished in an exact facsimile of the original. Times have moved on; many authors who were alive forty years ago are no longer with us but their biographical notes have not been changed. This is the book precisely as you will have remembered it. Read once more, and enjoy!

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Soundings was first published in 1969. It was intended as an ‘interim’ anthology of poetry for the Leaving Certificate until such time as a more permanent volume could be devised. Twenty six years later it was replaced. In the meantime it had passed through the hands of hundreds of thousands of students in Ireland. Soundings might have been replaced but it was never fully forgotten. Old copies ended up with an individual personality honed out of manual annotations and thoughts, not all of them provided by the teacher. Scrawls in biro or pencil testified to the thoughts and daydreams many users. A surprising number of copies ended up in attics only to be rediscovered with delight many years later and to be given treasured status in new homes. One former student recalled how Soundings was the first school book to treat her as an adult. It made no concessions to the ‘teenager’. It didn’t patronise. Its imagery was entirely in the poetry. The typography was appalling but the cover design still resonates. A decade after its demise, second hand copies of Soundings were fetching surprising prices. It was widely discussed in chat-rooms on the web. There were increasing demands for a reprint. So here is Soundings, in its original form just as you remember it. The same stony grey soil of Patrick Kavanagh’s Monaghan; T.S.Eliot’s same women who come and go talking of Michaelangelo. Please enjoy once more!

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