Contents: Translation and Irish Poetry in English; The Historical and Literary Background to the Translation of Irish Poetry; Joseph Cooper Walker and Charlotte Brooke; The Beginnings of an Irish Tradition in English; Some Cork Translators; James Hardiman and his Translators; Two Northern Translators: Matthew Moore Graham and Samuel Ferguson; James Clarence Mangan; Edward Walsh; The 1850s: W.H. Drummond, S.H. O'Grady, Sigerson; Douglas Hyde; George Sigerson's^R Bards of the Gael and Gall; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Irish writing has been influenced by religion from the beginning; indeed it was the arrival of Christianity which brought Latin orthography, which men of learning adopted. Pagan beliefs were assimilated into Christianity, but not entirely so: a theme which is dealt with in the essay on writing in early Ireland. The relationship between the various Irish Churches and writers in the 18th and 19th centuries is examined as is the influence of folk religion in modern Irish literature. There follow essays on: ghosts, Yeats, Synge, Joyce and Beckett; and on the poets Macneice, Kavanagh and Desmond Egan. Contributors: Lance St. John Butler; Peter Denman; Desmond Egan; Ruth Fleischmann; A. M. Gibbs; Barbara Hayley; Eamonn Hughes; Anne McCartney; Seamus MacMathuna; Joseph McMinn; Nuala ni Dhomhnaill; Mitsuko Ohno; Daithi O Hogain; Alan Peacock; Patricia Rafroidi and Robert Welch. Irish Literary Studies Series No. 37.