Stories in English An early example in Ireland is
George Moore's collection of stories
The Untilled Field (1903), which deal with themes of clerical interference in the daily lives of the Irish peasantry, and of the issue of emigration. The stories were originally written for translation into Irish, in order to serve as models for other writers working in the language. Three of the translations were published in the
New Ireland Review, but publication was then paused due to a perceived
anti-clerical sentiment. In 1902 the entire collection was translated by
Tadhg Ó Donnchadha and
Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin, and published in a parallel-text edition by the
Gaelic League as
An-tÚr-Ghort. Moore later revised the texts for the English edition. These stories were influenced by
Turgenev's ''A Sportsman's Sketches'', a book recommended to Moore by
W. K. Magee, a sub-librarian of the
National Library of Ireland, and had earlier suggested that Moore "was best suited to become Ireland's Turgenev". The tales are recognised by some as representing the birth of the Irish short story as a literary genre. On 7 January 1904 Joyce attempted to publish an essay-story, "A Portrait of the Artist", dealing with
aesthetics, only to have it rejected by the free-thinking magazine
Dana. He decided, on his twenty-second birthday, to revise the story into a novel he called
Stephen Hero, which was later re-written as
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It was in 1905 that Joyce first attempted to get his famous collection of stories
Dubliners published, and only after many attempts was it published in 1914. One tradition of Irish storytelling is that it's passed down from ear to ear without being written down. Storytellers who recite these tales are known as Seanchaí. Examples of Seanchaí are
Edmund Lenihan and
Eamon Kelly (actor) Liam O'Flaherty published his first collection,
Spring Sowing, in 1924, depicting the harsh life of his native
Aran Islands.
Daniel Corkery,
A Munster Twilight (1916), was the first of a group of writers from
County Cork.
Seán Ó Faoláin, whose first collection
Midsummer Night Madness, 1932, was another member of this group, as was
Frank O'Connor. His first collection was
Guests of the Nation, 1931. The work of this "Cork school" continued with
Elizabeth Bowen (1899 – 1973), first collection
Encounters, 1923, in the 1930s, '40s and '50s. Important writers have continued writing stories, from the 1960s on, including
Cónal Creedon,
Benedict Kiely,
Mary Lavin,
John McGahern, and
Michael McLaverty. An important editorial influence on the short story from the sixties onwards was
David Marcus through his
New Irish Writing column in the now defunct
Irish Press newspaper and of numerous
anthologies of Irish fiction and poetry, including the Phoenix Irish Short Stories collections. Critical attention has been paid recently to the Irish short story with the publishing of three major books:
A Companion to the British and Irish Short Story (2008),
A History of the Irish Short Story (2011), and the collection of essays
The Irish Short Story: Traditions and Trends (2015). In addition, the critical journal
Journal of the Short Story in English has published special issues on Irish-American short stories, John McGahern, as well as the twenty-first-century Irish short story. Several Irish short-story anthologies have been published since 2000 to meet the demands of the reading public, for example: the
Faber Book of Best New Irish Short Stories 2005 and 2007;
Irish Short Stories (2011), edited by
Joseph O'Connor;
Town and Country: New Irish Short Stories (2013), edited and with an introduction by Kevin Barry;
The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story was published in 2010, edited and with an introduction by
Anne Enright.;
Silver Threads of Hope, edited by Anne Enright and
Sinéad Gleeson in 2012; and
The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers (2015), edited by Sinéad Gleeson. A
modernist pioneer was
Patrick Pearse, language activist and revolutionary, and writer of stories of idealistic content in a contemporary European form. Pearse was executed in 1916 but left a legacy which opened new possibilities for the language. Modernist possibilities were further developed by
Pádraic Ó Conaire, a writer of the 1920s on whom the European influence was evident but whose own legacy was mixed. He wrote, like Pearse, in the Irish of
Conamara, sometimes setting his stories in that remote landscape and at other times in the towns. Ó Conaire has been described as the true pioneer of short story writing in Irish because of his rejection of older conventions and his determination to deal fearlessly with the truths of human nature. A different approach was taken by
Pádraig Ó Siochfhradha (known as "An Seabhac" – the hawk), who set his comic stories and sketches in the Munster
Gaeltacht. ''An Baile S'Againne'' (1913) ("Our Place"). The
Donegal Gaeltacht brought forth
Séamas Ó Grianna, who wrote prolifically and idiomatically about the people of his region, though much of his work has been criticised for its predictability. His brother
Seosamh Mac Grianna, less prolific, left a handful of stories.
Máirtín Ó Cadhain, an idiosyncratic writer, was born in the Conamara
Gaeltacht, a region rich in folklore but with no strong literary tradition. His early stories, written in a thorny and difficult style, though with psychological penetration, were set in his native region. He settled eventually in Dublin and his style became more direct, though still marked by imaginative intensity. He remains generally regarded as the doyen of the craft in Irish and one of the best writers to emerge from Ireland in the 20th century, despite the fact that the difficulty of his earlier style was criticised – a difficulty which may have robbed him of a wider readership. The emigrant tradition in Ireland continued in the forties and fifties, and many of those who went were Irish speakers. One was
Dónal Mac Amhlaidh, who took to writing about his experiences as a navvy in England and about other aspects of lives touched by exile.
Liam O'Flaherty, though a native speaker of Irish, made his name as a writer in English. He returned to Irish in a collection called
Dúil ("Desire"), containing stories in the west of Ireland. The reviews were disappointing and may have discouraged him from writing in Irish again, but
Dúil continues to be printed. In the middle of the 20th century most habitual speakers of Irish still lived in the Gaeltacht, but the number of urban readers was growing. The genre was still dominated by a masculine sensibility, but in 1955 brother and sister
Donncha Ó Céileachair and
Síle Ní Chéileachair published
Bullaí Mhártain, stories dealing with both the Munster Gaeltacht and city life. These stories were praised for their scope and their skilful adaptation of the language to an urban environment. A collection of sketches and stories called
Feamainn Bealtaine ("Seaweed in May") was published by the poet
Máirtín Ó Direáin in 1961. These deal largely with his youth in the Irish-speaking
Aran Islands. An important contemporary practitioners of the genre, the poetic realist
Seán Mac Mathúna (born 1935), has published versions of his stories in both Irish and English. His reputation was confirmed by his collection
Ding ("Wedge"), with its disturbing title story. He was never a prolific writer, and has published little for some years. The short story continues to be a favoured form for writers in Irish, possibly because it lends itself to publication in the two main literary magazines,
Feasta and
Comhar. Collections in Irish continue to be published, with over 125 presently available. Women writers are now more prominent –
Orna Ní Choileáin, Méadhbh Ní Ghallchobhair, Deirdre Ní Ghrianna and others. Younger readers are addressed by writers like Ré Ó Laighléis, whose stories deal with social problems such as drug abuse. Most readers now come from the urban Irish-speaking community, together with all the younger writers. This represents a distinctive change in the situation of the language and the future of its literature, though the Gaeltacht still has writers from the older generation, such as Colm Ó Ceallaigh and
Joe Steve Ó Neachtain. The prevailing tone of short stories in Irish continues to be quotidian and realistic. An exception is the work of
Daithí Ó Muirí, whose stories have been praised for their assured and engaging style and their surrealistic atmosphere. His collection
Cogaí (Wars) won an important literary prize in 2001 in the
Cló Iar-Chonnacht Literary Award Competition. The adjudicators referred to the savagery and vitality of the writing.
Critical theory Influential books on the theory and practice of the short story were written by Sean O Faolain
The Short Story (1948) and Frank O'Connor
The Lonely Voice (1962). They advocated a realist approach in which the story focuses on a moment of crisis or change in a character's life. This approach has been an important influence on the short story in Ireland. Recently
Jack Hart declared in the preface to his collection ''From Under Gogol's Nose'' (2004) that the parameters of the short story had been set too narrowly. He advocates a broader range of possibilities, from stories that are almost essays to those that are almost poems. He argues that the short story should be seen as closer by nature to the poem, requiring a similar engagement from the reader and communicating in a similar way through a fundamentally oral/aural process. ==Awards==