{"product_id":"9780717163571","title":"Sean O'Casey, Writer at Work: The Definitive Biography of the Last Great Writer of the Irish Literary Revival","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eChristopher Murray’s definitive study of Seán O’Casey, the last great writer of the Irish literary revival, provides a strong interpretative context for his life.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMurray looks afresh at the Dublin of the 1880s and 1890s in order to provide an authoritative background to O’Casey’s childhood. He pays particular attention to the political situation from 1880 to 1922, setting it against O’Casey’s own treatment in his autobiographies in an attempt to establish ‘O’Casey’s Ireland’. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut O’Casey was an international as well as a national figure: half his life was spent away from Ireland and his annual income came mainly from the USA. Murray considers O’Casey’s career up to the controversial premiere of \u003ci\u003eThe Plough and the Stars\u003c\/i\u003e in 1926 in the light of W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory and their dream of a national theatre. Thereafter he interprets it in a much wider, equally contentious, international context, chronicling his subsequent projects, which included \u003ci\u003eThe Silver Tassie\u003c\/i\u003e and his Marxist play \u003ci\u003eThe Star Turns Red\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMurray establishes O’Casey as a self-made man of letters, an irrepressible fighter, a man who combined political courage and innocence, an individual torn between a humanist vision of life rooted in his Dublin childhood and a utopian but blinkered loyalty to the Soviet Union. Murray contends that while much of O’Casey’s work was uneven, flawed and overambitious, at its best it was infused with a passion and generosity that place it among the best bodies of drama in the twentieth century. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRich in original material, Murray’s biography reconstructs a life committed to the act of writing as a moral endeavour. There was something profoundly religious in O’Casey’s psyche, which was at war with the communism he embraced, just as there was something profoundly romantic in a sensibility that retained the image of his first love throughout his years in exile. He was a man of many contradictions, a complex, combative public figure and yet a warm and intimate family man. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf Seán O’Casey’s life was in the end a failure, it was a noble one which reveals that, to quote a Jacobean playwright he admired, ‘Integrity of life is fame’s best friend’. That integrity shines through in this biography more brightly and engagingly than ever before.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eSeán O’Casey, Writer at Work\u003c\/i\u003e: Table of Contents\u003col\u003ePreconception(s)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePART 1 First Things\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cli\u003eBeginnings\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSeeing Things\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e‘Give Me That Old Style Religion!’\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e‘To Make Eternal Silence Speak’\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUnder Which Flag?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePART 2 The Dublin Plays\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cli\u003eLove Among the Ruins\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGoing Through the Mill\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTelling It Like It Is\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e‘I Banish You!’\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePART 3 London – New York – London\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cli\u003eLondon Lights and \u003ci\u003eThe Silver Tassie\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTrapped Inside the Gates?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e‘Beside the Golden Door’\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePART 4 Toughing It Out In Devon\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cli\u003eO’Casey’s Good War\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ci\u003eOak Leaves and Lavender\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ci\u003eCock-a-Doodle Dandy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Road to Torquay\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePART 5 Last Things\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cli\u003eThe Writer’s Not for Burning\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA Death in the Family\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Drums of Archbishop McQuaid\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSomething of a Renaissance\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTalking to God\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003eAfterlife\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/ol\u003e","brand":"Gill Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47125514977520,"sku":"9780717163571","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780717163571_p0.jpg?v=1763618714","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780717163571","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}