World War I in Irish Art and Literature

Focusing on Ireland’s literary response to World War I, this book explores writings from a range of perspectives that intervened in Irish political and cultural discourse. Works such as Patrick MacGill’s The Amateur Army (1915) and John Lavery’s Daylight Raid from my Studio (1917) show how the war was fully examined by Irish authors.

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Focusing on Ireland's literary response to World War I, this book explores writings from a range of perspectives that intervened in Irish political and cultural discourse. Works such as Patrick MacGill's novel The Amateur Army (1915), John Lavery's Daylight Raid from my Studio (1917) and Margaret Barrington's My Cousin Justin (1939) show how the war was fully examined by Irish authors--but was disregarded with the beginning of World War II. Diverse voices challenged prevailing notions of Irish national identity, from the bourgeois cosmopolitanism of Tom Kettle to the working-class internationalism of Patrick MacGill to Pamela Hinkson's cynicism about imperial patriarchy.