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Not to Be Taken at Bed-Time by Rosa Mulholland

8 December 2019

An Extract from the Introduction by Richard Dalby In the late-nineteenth century Rosa Mulholland achieved great popularity and acclaim for her many novels (written for both an adult audience and younger readers), several of which chronicled the lives of the Irish poor. These novels, notably The Wicked Woods of Tobereevil (1872), incorporated weird elements of Irish folklore. Earlier in her career, she became one of the select band of authors employed by Charles Dickens to write stories for his popular magazine All the Year Round, together with Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Hesba Stretton, and Amelia B. …

Bending to Earth: Strange Stories by Irish Women

8 December 2019

An Extract from the Introduction by Maria Giakaniki and Brian J. Showers Irish women have long produced literature of the gothic, uncanny, and supernatural. Bending to Earth draws together twelve such tales. While none of the authors herein were considered primarily writers of fantastical fiction during their lifetimes, they each wandered at some point in their careers into more speculative realms — some only briefly, others for lengthier stays. Names such as Charlotte Riddell and Rosa Mulholland will already be familiar to aficionados of the eerie, while Katharine Tynan and Clotilde Graves are sure to gain new admirers. From a …

Le Fanu’s “Green Tea”: A Sesquicentennial of Fear

23 October 2019

On this day, 23 October 1869, readers of All the Year Round, edited by Charles Dickens, may well have been unprepared for a chilling tale of paranoia and despair that commenced in Mr. Dickens’s weekly journal. That story was “Green Tea”, and though it was originally published anonymously, it was penned by the Dublin writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. While Le Fanu is probably now better known for his pre-Dracula vampire novella “Carmilla” (1871/2), for me “Green Tea” will always be his masterpiece. The story tells of the good natured Reverend Mr. Jennings, whose late night penchant for green tea …

The Green Book 13

26 May 2019

EDITOR’S NOTE One perennial question about genre fiction centres around the notion of “tradition”: the influence authors and their works have on the next generation, and so on down the line. In posing this question, we ask whether or not an unbroken literary pedigree can be established. For example, an excessive amount of energy has been expended exploring links, both legitimate and spurious, between Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” (1871/2) and Stoker’s Dracula (1897) — and believe me, this seems to be an all-consuming pastime for some. But to me, Irish genre fiction has always seemed more a web of thematic shadows, …

Strange Stories by Irish Women

22 February 2019

Back in 2015, Jason Zerrillo and I designed the poster “Irish Writers of the Fantastic” as a response to the more ubiquitous “Irish Writers” poster that one often finds around Dublin. Instead of the typical faces — Joyce, Yeats, Beckett, Swift, etc. — we wanted to showcase the Irish writers we enjoyed reading — those with a more fantastical bent — Le Fanu, Dunsany, Hearn, etc. Our goal was to establish a sort of lesser known canon, but a no less important one. If you want to see “Irish Writers of the Fantastic”, and read about the thought that went …

Beatrice Grimshaw (1870-1953)

16 February 2019

“A mountain paradise, yet silent and lonesome, somewhat strange, for all its sweetness of flower and of friend, not friendly . . . ” – “The Blanket Fiend” (1929) Beatrice Grimshaw (1870-1953) was born in Dunmurry, Co. Antrim on 3 February 1870. Though raised in Northern Ireland, and educated in France, Grimshaw is primarily associated with Australia and the South Seas, which she wrote about in her fiction and travel journalism. She was a devoted (and record-breaking) cyclist, and during the 1890s wrote for the Dublin-based magazines Irish Cyclist and Social Review. In 1904 Grimshaw was commissioned by London’s Daily …

Dora Sigerson Shorter (1866-1918)

15 February 2019

“Up and down the streets I wandered till dawn grew gray, but no dawn arose in my heart, only black night for ever.” – “Transmigration” (1900) Dora Sigerson Shorter (1866-1918) was born in Clare Street, Dublin. Both of her parents were writers—her father was the noted surgeon and poet George Sigerson (1836-1925). In 1895 she married the English literary critic Clement King Shorter and relocated to London. Early in her career she contributed to magazines such as Irish Monthly and Samhain, and became friendly with the political activist Alice Furlong and the author Katharine Tynan. Shorter’s volumes of poetry include …

Ethna Carbery (1866-1902)

14 February 2019

“One bleak night in autumn a sound outside drew him to the door, and opening it, he stood listening.” – “The Wee Gray Woman” (1903) Ethna Carbery (1866-1902) was the pen name of journalist, writer, poet, and patriot Anna MacManus. She was born Anna Bella Johnston in Ballymena, Co. Antrim on 3 December 1866, and started publishing poems and short stories in Irish periodicals at the age of fifteen. She was one of the co-founders of the Daughters of Ireland, a radical nationalist women’s organisation led by Maud Gonne. With the poet and writer Alice Milligan, Carbery published two nationalist …