Irish literature: Quick Facts

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Last updated

Oct. 23, 2026

News •

IMRAM Irish-Language Literature Festival line-up revealed • Oct. 16, 2026, 8:16 AM ET (Irish Times)

Photos and Videos

The Rival Managers

Don Dismallo Running the Literary Gantlet

Oliver Goldsmith

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

Samuel Ferguson

Maria Edgeworth

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.

Charles Gavan Duffy

Take a look at George Bernard Shaw speaking on the marvels of Movietone

Learn about The Great Book of Ireland, a book containing hundreds of Irish poems, music compositions, and drawings produced between 1989 and 1991

Watch a dramatization of The Well of the Saints by Irish literary renaissance poetic dramatist J.M. Synge

Why has Dante's Inferno been important to Irish writers and artists?

Hear about Austin Clarke's Mnemosyne Lay in Dust, a long poem recounting the poet's experience of mental disorder

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Topics

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Key People

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Violet Martin

Irish writer

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Samuel Ferguson

Irish writer

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Edith Somerville

Irish writer

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John Banim

Irish author

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Michael Banim

Irish author

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish author and clergyman

William Butler Yeats seated, wearing round glasses and a textured jacket, looking directly at the camera in a black and white portrait from around 1923.

William Butler Yeats

Irish author and poet

James Joyce wearing a dark suit, light tie, round glasses, and a hat, looking to the side outdoors in Zurich, Switzerland.

James Joyce

Irish author

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

Irish dramatist and critic

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Irish author

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Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Anglo-Irish playwright

Martin McDonagh

Martin McDonagh

British-Irish playwright and filmmaker

Sally Rooney, wearing a blue blazer and light shirt, speaks while seated onstage with a microphone clipped to her lapel.

Sally Rooney

Irish novelist

Poet Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

Irish poet

Oliver Goldsmith, oil painting from the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1770; in the National Portrait Gallery, London

Oliver Goldsmith

Anglo-Irish author

Colm Toibin stands in a narrow cobblestone alleyway in Mantova, Italy, wearing a gray jacket and black shirt with his hands in his pockets.

Colm Tóibín

Irish author

Roddy Doyle

Roddy Doyle

Irish writer

Author Tana French sits in a white chair on stage, gesturing with raised hands and smiling during a literary festival event in Cologne.

Tana French

American-born Irish writer

Portrait of Irish playwright Sean O'Casey wearing a suit and tie, looking slightly to the side against a dark background.

Sean O’Casey

Irish dramatist

John Banville

John Banville

Irish writer

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