Despite the relatively slender volume of his work and the obscurity that marked his brief life--he was known to his friends as "the Recluse"--the Cork poet J. J. Callanan (1795-1829) has come to be recognized as one of the most significant Irish poets writing before Yeats. Inspired equally by English romanticism and Ireland's Gaelic culture, and drawing often on the life of Irish-speaking communities in West Cork, Callanan's work negotiates with remarkable effect between Ireland's two principal traditions, while giving voice to many of the cultural forces that were shaping Irish life in the early years of the nineteenth century. Callanan's poetry has been out of print since 1883. This long-overdue selection brings together all his poems having to do with Ireland, including those for which he is best known--his poetic translations from the Irish, lyrics such as "Gougane Barra," and his long autobiographical poem, "The Recluse of Inchidony," The poems are fully annotated, and original sources for the translations, where known, are given. The introduction provides a detailed account of Callanan's life, drawing in part on private letters and diaries, as well as a critical assessment of his poetry. There is also an extensive bibliography that includes a listing of all critical writings about Callanan.

The years between 1780 and 1830 are vital decades in the history of Irish writing in English. This book charts the confluence of Enlightenment, antiquarian, and romantic energies within Irish literary culture and shows how different writers and genres absorbed, dispersed and remade those interests during five decades of political change. During those same years, literature made its own history. By the 1840s, Irish writing formed a recognizable body of work, which later generations would draw on, quote, anthologize and dispute. Questions raised by novels, poems and plays of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries - the politics of language and voice; the relationship between literature and locality; the possibility of literature as a profession - resonated for many Irish writers over the centuries that followed and continue to matter today. This comprehensive volume will be a key reference for scholars and students of Irish literature and romantic literary studies.