Soft day: A Miscellany of Contemporary Irish Writing

Soft day: A Miscellany of Contemporary Irish Writing

Peter Fallon and Seán Golden, Editors
University of Notre Dame Press / Wolfhound Press 1980
ISBN 0-268-01695-X

Soft Day features the work of thirty-six living Irish writers. The eldest is eighty-two, the youngest twenty-four. They include Liam O’Flaherty, Samuel Beckett, Mary Lavin, Richard Murphy, Thomas Kinsella, John Montague, Desmond O’Grady, Seamus Heaney, Aidan Higgins, and John McGahern. The collection contains prose, poetry, drama, and translation. Much of the work is previously unpublished or uncollected, and the emphasis is on new work. Generous selections from the complete range of contemporary Irish writing form the most comprehensive, introduction available. As such, it provides at last a substantial selection of suitable texts in an area almost completely neglected in the study of Irish and contemporary literature.

This miscellany demonstrates the diversity and distinctiveness of the Irish — South and North, traditional and contemporary. Today’s writers are producing work that will in time rank with that of their heralded predecessors. Soft Day is a first step in making their work more widely known and appreciated.

Cover: Brush drawing by Louis le Brocquy