Bernard Shaw and the Making of Modern Ireland

This book is an anthology focused on Shaw’s efforts, literary and political, that worked toward a modernizing Ireland. Following Declan Kiberd’s Foreword and the editor’s Introduction, the contributing chapters, in their order of appearance, are from President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins, Anthony Roche, David Clare, Elizabeth Mannion, Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, Aisling Smith, Susanne Colleary, Audrey McNamara, Aileen R. Ruane, Peter Gahan, and Gustavo A. Rodriguez Martin. The essays establish that Shaw’s Irishness was inherent and manifested itself in his work, demonstrating that Ireland was a recurring feature in his considerations. Locating Shaw within the march towards modernizing Ireland furthers the recent efforts to secure Shaw’s place within the Irish spheres of literature and politics.     

“Bernard Shaw and the Making of Modern Ireland offers a valuable corrective to Shaw’s neglect by Irish studies, and I have learned a great deal from it. Indeed, my understanding of the Shavian canon and of ‘public Shaw’s’ involvement in Irish political discourse has undergone a salutary revision for which I am most grateful to the editors of and contributors to this excellent volume.” (Stephen Watt, SHAW The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, Vol. 41 (1), 2021)

Audrey McNamara’s monograph Bernard Shaw: From Womanhood to Nationhood (2020) is in progress. Other publications cover work on Bernard Shaw, Conor McPherson, Enda Walsh, and Benjamin Black. She is on the editorial board of SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies and lectures at University College Dublin, Ireland.Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel is the author of Bernard Shaw, W. T. Stead, and the New Journalism (2017) and Shaw, Synge, Connolly, and Socialist Provocation (2011). He is on the editorial board of SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, and is Professor of Humanities at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, USA.