Irish Women's Fiction

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 written by such authors as Anne Enright and Emma Donoghue, among others. 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 of feminism in the 1970s, to postmodernism in the 1990s. The book 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. 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. *** "Ms Ingman's light touch combines with her in depth knowledge to lift her writing out of purely academic fields and into the realm of a voyage of Irish discovery and insight. The only downfall is it will leave the reader with a very long list of must-read books for the foreseeable future " - Viv Young, New York Journal of Books, June 3, 2013 *** ..".an accessible, stimulating survey of women's voices in the literary history of Ireland. Ingman's choice to use chronology as her mode of organization allows her to give writers who enjoyed long careers the attention each part of their lives requires....a valuable handbook for students of Irish fiction and women's studies. Recommended." - Choice, January 2014, Vol. 51, No. 5 *** "The strength of this book comes from the impressive underpinning of wide historical scholarship evident in each chapter, reflected in the excellent bibliography, and in the welcome recovery of a score of forgotten or neglected texts, particularly in the early nineteenth century." - Irish Literary Supplement, Vol.34, No.1, Fall 2014