Straight from the Heart

Straight from the Heart

Author: Bridget Hourican

Publisher: Gill & Macmillan

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9780717150250

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From the early Gaels to Hugh Leonard, Irish people have been seducing, cajoling, stalking, obsessing, throwing jealous fits, begging marriage, urging adultery, mourning lost loves, plotting new loves, threatening to kill themselves, and addressing moving last words to loved ones before going to their deaths all through the medium of the written word. Straight from the Heart is both a beautiful gift book and a piece of fascinating social history. It comprises more than 60 love letters ranging in time from 1694 to 1998. Bridget Hourican's brilliant selection includes Yeats to Maud Gonne, correspondence between the tragic Francis Sheehy Skeffington and his wife Hannah as well as that between James Joyce and Nora Barnacle. Three of the 1916 leaders, Thomas McDonagh, Joseph M Plunkett and Eamonn Ceannt are here as well as Michael Collins, John Millington Synge and George Bernard Shaw. It even includes a love letter from Eamonn DeValera to his wife Sinead. Most touchingly we have a letter from Patrick Kavanagh to Hilda Moriarty, the beauty for whom he wrote Raglan Road. The book also includes some ordinary people - letters from the Front and from emigrants writing home to their sweethearts - and these are often as eloquent and heartbreaking as those written by the literati or historical giants as love can raise any man (or woman) to passion.


Disturbed Ireland : Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81

Disturbed Ireland : Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81

Author: Bernard H. Becker

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 1909906247

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In this invaluable resource for both local and family historians, Becker, a renown nineteenth century journalist, journeys through Mayo, Galway, Clare, Limerick, Cork, and Kerry, during 1880, reporting the Land War. We hear of the places he visited and the people he met, including Captain Boycott. Members of the landed gentry and military are depicted as struggling to cope with the ostracism of the local populations of Westport, Castlebar, Ballinrobe, Connemara, Ennis, and Gortatlee, Tralee, Killarney and Valencia. The locals are depicted as lively, courteous and impenetrable as they close ranks against a system, which is driving them from the land. His analysis is often sympathetic to the hungry, unkempt native Irish, but ultimately he retires within the boycotted boundaries of the country houses of the besieged Irish gentry. Clachan editors have edited it carefully, updating certain disused symbols, spelling and punctuation. We have also provided an index and scholarly footnotes.