An introduction to all the leading Irish writers and some of the lesser known playwrights, novelists, short story writers, and poets, placing them in context and providing a list of their works. Commentaries give brief but telling insights into their writing. Jeffares follows the history of Irish writing, beginning with Swift, and working through playwrights Synge and O"Casey to Beckett and Friel; from nineteenth century poetry through Yeats to Seamus Heaney and Paul Durcan; in novels, from Maria Edgeworth, through Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Kate O"Brien, Flann O"Brien to contemporaries Julia O"Faolain, Roddy Doyle, and Anne Enright.