For those who have never spent a summer in Ireland there remains a delightful experience, for no country is more attractive, unless it be Japan, and no people are more genial or charming or courteous in their reception of a stranger, or more cordial in their hospitality. The American tourist usually lands at Queenstown, runs up to Cork, rides out to Blarney Castle in a jaunting car, and across to Killarney with a crowd of other tourists on the top of a big coach, then rushes up to Dublin, spends a lot of money at the poplin and lace stores, takes a train for Belfast, glances at the GiantÕs Causeway, and then hurries across St. GeorgeÕs Channel for London and the Continent. Hundreds of Americans do this each year, and write home rhapsodies about the beauty of Ireland. But they have not seen Ireland. No one can see Ireland in less than three months, for some of the counties are as different as Massachusetts and Alabama. Six weeks is scarcely long enough to visit the most interesting places. The railway accommodations, the coaches, the steamers, and other facilities for travel are as perfect as those of Switzerland. The hotels are not so good, and there will be a few discomforts here and there to those who are accustomed to the luxuries of London and Paris, but they can be endured without ruffling the temper, simply by thinking of the manifold enjoyments that no other country can produce. And Ireland is particularly interesting just now because of the mighty forces that are engaged in the redemption of the people from the poverty and the wretchedness in which a large proportion of them have been submerged for generations.ÊNo government ever did so much for the material welfare of its subjects as Great Britain is now doing for Ireland, and the improvement in the condition of affairs during the last few years has been extraordinary. In order to observe and describe this economic evolution, the author spent the summer of 1908 visiting various parts of the island and has endeavored to narrate truthfully what he saw and heard. This volume contains the greater part of a series of letters written forÊThe Chicago Record-HeraldÊand also published inÊThe Evening StarÊof Washington,ÊThe TimesÊof St. Louis, and other American papers. By permission of Mr. Frank B. Noyes, editor and publisher ofÊThe Chicago Record-Herald, and to gratify many readers who have asked for them, they are herewith presented in permanent form. Ê

A forgotten historical figure and his influence on the writing of James Joyce In this book, Neil Davison argues that Albert Altman (1853‒1903), a Dublin-based businessman and Irish nationalist, influenced James Joyce’s creation of the character of Leopold Bloom, as well as Ulysses’s broader themes surrounding race, nationalism, and empire. Using extensive archival research, Davison reveals parallels between the lives of Altman and Bloom, including how the experience of double marginalization—which Altman felt as both a Jew in Ireland and an Irishman in the British Empire—is a major idea explored in Joyce’s work. Altman, a successful salt and coal merchant, was involved in municipal politics over issues of Home Rule and labor, and frequently appeared in the press over the two decades of Joyce’s youth. His prominence, Davison shows, made him a familiar name in the Home Rule circles with which Joyce and his father most identified. The book concludes by tracing the influence of Altman’s career on the Dubliners story “Ivy Day in the Committee Room,” as well as throughout the whole of Ulysses. Through Altman’s biography, Davison recovers a forgotten life story that illuminates Irish and Jewish identity and culture in Joyce’s Dublin. A volume in the Florida James Joyce Series, edited by Sebastian D. G. Knowles

Travel literature has been described by Jonathan Raban as "literature's red-light district". It defies peoples' beliefs, confuses expectations, crosses disciplinary boundaries and is linked to ethnography, journalism and biography. Yet for all that has managed to remain not only a visible but also an increasingly popular literary genre. This anthology makes an entertaining and insightful contribution to this engaging field. It includes extracts from well known writers, such as Thackeray, Boll and Chesterton, but also presents less familiar figures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The seventy pieces collected here both offer sharp observations of the country and are equally revealing about the travelers themselves. Each extract, where possible, is prefaced by a brief biography of its author. For readers interested in the origins and historical role of travel writing in general, and how they relate to Ireland, the editor offers an illuminating introduction. This anthology presents illuminating snapshots of Ireland over two hundred years. It also provides insights into the varied perspectives of the travelers themselves, a perspective often influenced by contemporary political events such as the Great Famine, Home Rule, the Civil War and the Troubles. This anthology leaves the reader with an enduring image of Ireland's ability to fascinate and stimulate visitors through two centuries.

Superstition, mysticism, and religion weave like tangled vines through the tales of Amelia’s newly discovered ancestry. As a widow struggling to sustain herself and her ten-year-old son, Amy’s modest life is tragically disrupted when a dubious lawyer determines her late mother, adopted at birth, was the estranged daughter of the recently deceased Lexington McClary. Although the net worth of the once enormous estate is petty, Amy decides to travel several hundred miles to attend the funeral, in the hope of at least learning a semblance of her newfound ancestry. After the interment, alone in the secluded rural cemetery, Amy trips and bashes her head against a tombstone, suffering a coma and complications requiring medical care and convalescence for several months. While precariously recovering, Amy is visited in the depth of nights by a mysterious woman who tells stories of Amy’s maternal grandparents, their families, and acquaintances. The tales of her ancestors reach back nearly a century and include their immigration from Ireland to New York City and their migration westward to Indian Territory. Poignant remembrances of her own life and the altered world into which she regains consciousness portray the unconquerable but elusive human spirit, confronting failure in the wake of triumph, tragedy dispelling romance, madness shaming war of its glory, and the cruelty of murder in defiance of reason.