Irish Women’s Fiction: From Edgeworth to Enright

Description

Irish Women’s Fiction examines women’s novels up to and following the establishment of the Irish state, the period of the Second World War, the Second Wave feminism of the 1970s, to postmodernism in the 1990s.

Heather Ingman discusses Irish women’s writing across all major genres both literary and popular, including children’s writing, crime fiction, and in the discussion of the writing of the Celtic Tiger era, the phenomenal success of Irish chick lit.

The topic of Irish women’s writing is still a neglected one, with women’s novels too often sidelined, despite the international recognition gained by prize-winning novels by Anne Enright and Emma Donoghue among others.

Describing the circumstances of women’s writing lives, as well as the themes with which they deal, Irish Women’s Fiction is written in an accessible style and is the first ever single-volume survey of Irish women’s writing and writers, bringing Irish women writers back in to the canon of Irish literature.

• First ever single-volume survey of Irish women’s fiction, exploring the evolution of themes and styles, as well as the lives of the authors
• Features hundreds of Irish female novelists, including Elizabeth Bowen, Kate O’Brien, Jennifer Johnston, Enda O’Brien, Maeve Binchy, Emma Donoghue, Kate O’Riordan, and Anne Enright
• All major fiction genres explored both literary and popular, including children’s writing, crime fiction, and chick lit.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Literary Foremothers: Maria Edgeworth and Sydney Owenson

1. Bicycles and Trousers: The New Woman Writer
2. 1910-1939: Disillusionment
3. The Second World War and After: Stagnation and Unease
4. 1960-1979: Sex, Religion and Exile
5. 1980-1999: From Feminism to Postmodernism
6. The New Woman in the Celtic Tiger Years

About the Author

Heather Ingman is Adjunct Professor in the School of English, Trinity College, Dublin. Her publications include Women’s Inter-War Fiction: Mothers, Daughters and Writing, (1998), Twentieth-Century Fiction by Irish Women: Nation and Gender (2007) and A History of the Irish Short Story (2009).