Irish literature

Introduction
The hybridity of Irish literature in English
The 18th century
- The Irishness of Anglo-Irish literature
- From Jonathan Swift to Edmund Burke
The 19th century
- Samuel Ferguson, Sydney Owenson, and Maria Edgeworth
- Roman Catholic writers
- Irish nationalism and the Great Potato Famine
- The decline of the Protestant Ascendancy
- George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde
The 20th century
- William Butler Yeats
- John Millington Synge
- James Joyce
- Samuel Beckett and Flann O’Brien
- Ireland and Northern Ireland
- The 1960s and beyond
The 21st century

References & Edit History Related Topics

Images, Videos & Interactives

Don Dismallo Running the Literary Gantlet

Sublime and Beautiful Reflections on the French Revolution; or, The Man in the Moon at Large

Choropleth map of Ireland showing county-level population changes from 1841 to 1851 during the Great Potato Famine. Most counties are shaded in red, orange, or yellow to indicate significant population decreases, especially in the west and south, while Dublin is shown in green to indicate a slight population increase.

Quizzes

4:043 Dickinson, Emily: A Life of Letters, This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to me; I'll tell you how the Sun Rose/A Ribbon at a time; Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul

Famous Poets and Poetic Form

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) only confirmed photograph of Emily Dickinson. 1978 scan of a Daguerreotype. ca. 1847; in the Amherst College Archives. American poet. See Notes:

Poetry: First Lines

Related Questions

How did Brendan Behan’s prison experiences influence Borstal Boy and The Quare Fellow?
How did Christianity influence Irish learning and manuscript production?
How did English colonization affect the Irish language and its literature?
How did Flann O’Brien satirize Gaeltacht memoirs in An Béal Bocht?
How did Frank O’Connor and Sean O’Faolain portray modern Irish society in their short stories?
How did Irish-language publishers and festivals support modern Irish writing?
How did Irish song meters differ from earlier bardic verse forms?
How did J.M. Synge use a stylized Irish peasant dialect in his plays?
How did Lady Gregory contribute to the Abbey Theatre and Irish drama?
How did Máirtín Ó Cadhain modernize the Irish-language short story and novel?
How did Patrick Kavanagh portray rural life in The Great Hunger?
How did Scandinavian invasions affect the preservation of early Irish literature?
How did Sean O’Casey’s Dublin plays respond to the Irish War of Independence and civil war?
How did The Midnight Court satirize sexual conventions in 18th-century Ireland?
How did Young Ireland and its newspaper The Nation promote Irish cultural nationalism?
How did aisling poems become popular in Irish literature?
How did ancient Irish heroic legends inspire the Irish literary renaissance?
How did hereditary bardic families preserve Irish literature after the 12th century?
How did the Gaelic Revival encourage renewed interest in Irish literature and folklore?
How did the Troubles in Northern Ireland inspire Irish novels and poetry?
How did the use of the Latin alphabet change the recording of Irish literature?
How do The Book of the Dun Cow and The Book of Leinster preserve early Irish saga material?
How is Cú Chulainn portrayed in Táin Bó Cuailnge?
How old are the earliest surviving Irish-language inscriptions written in ogham?
What happens to King Suibhne in Buile Suibhne?
What role did Douglas Hyde play in the Gaelic Revival?
What role did William Butler Yeats play in the Irish literary renaissance?
What role did monasteries play in preserving early Irish sagas and manuscripts?
What role did the Field Day Theatre Company play in Northern Irish drama and cultural politics?
Why did Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars cause riots at the Abbey Theatre?
Why did audiences riot at performances of The Playboy of the Western World?
Why did many Anglo-Irish writers leave Ireland to build careers in England?
Why did professional bardic poetry largely disappear after 1650?
Why did the short story become an important form in Irish fiction after independence?
Why is Brian Merriman’s The Midnight Court considered a major Irish-language poem?
Why was Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls banned in Ireland?
Why was the Gaelic League founded in 1893?

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Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

Irish literature - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
Irish literature - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Jonathan Swift Satirist, novelist, and essayist Jonathan Swift, oil painting by Charles Jervas; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Irish literature

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Last updated

Oct. 23, 2026 •History

Irish literature, the body of written works produced in Ireland or by Irish writers. This article discusses Irish literature written in English from about 1690; its history is closely linked with that of English literature. Irish-language literature is discussed in Celtic literature. After the literatures of Greek and Latin, literature in Irish is the oldest literature in Europe, dating from the 4th or 5th century ce. The presence of a “dual tradition” in Irish writing...

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