Publisher Description
This compiliation brings together some of the best poetry that Ireland can lay claim to, at times raw and at others sensuous and evocative. From Thomas Moore to Louis MacNeice through Katherine Tynan, John Millington Synge, Oscar Wilde, and the immortal W. B. Yeats alongside many others, this collection will not disappoint.
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About the Authors
Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) was born in Odense, Denmark, the son of a poor shoemaker and a washerwoman. As a young teenager, he became quite well known in Odense as a reciter of drama and as a singer. When he was fourteen, he set off for the capital, Copenhagen, determined to become a national success on the stage. He failed miserably, but made some influential friends in the capital who got him into school to remedy his lack of proper education. In 1829 his first book was published. After that, books came out at regular intervals. His stories began to be translated into English as early as 1846. Since then, numerous editions, and more recently Hollywood songs and Disney cartoons, have helped to ensure the continuing popularity of the stories in the English-speaking world.
Jim Weiss’ storytelling recordings have received the highest awards from the Parents’ Choice Foundation, Oppenheim Toy Portfolio, and the American Library Association and have been widely praised in major publications across North America and internationally. He is the winner of eight AudioFile Earphones Awards.
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was an Irish poet and dramatist. Born and educated in Dublin, he studied poetry in his youth and, from an early age, was fascinated by Irish legend and the occult. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival. He is generally considered one of the twentieth century’s key English language poets. He was a Symbolist poet, in that he used allusive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his career. In 1923 he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as “inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.” He was the first Irishman so honored. He is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).
John Millington Synge (1871—1909) was a poetic dramatist of great power and a leading figure in the Irish literary renaissance. After studying at Trinity College and at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin, he pursued further studies from 1893 to 1897 in Germany, Italy, and France. His travels along the Irish west coast inspired his most famous play, The Playboy of the Western World.