Young Irelands: Studies in Children’s Literature

The essays in this book - the fourth in the Studies in Children’s Literature series - examine how various texts read by children since the 18th century reflect concepts of Irish national and/or imperial identity, and how they resist the empire and the nation’s normative concepts. They also explore how non-Irish readers receive Irish children’s books. The book’s subject matter ranges from works by Jonathan Swift and Maria Edgeworth and the revivalist texts of the Tain to the translation of contemporary fiction and the reception of Padraic Colum’s work in the United States. The book examines the resistant works of James Joyce and Oscar Wilde, Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopedia, and the periodicals of Na Fianna and Our Boys. The book also addresses aspects of national identity in 20th-century and contemporary fiction. (Series: Studies in Children’s Literature) *** Overall, this is an important collection of essays, which highlights the complexities of Ireland’s identity… Most importantly, it manages to fill gaps in recent criticism of Irish children’s literature, particularly in relation to writings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. - Irish Literary Supplement, Vol. 33, No. 1, Fall 2013