Irish Literary Renaissance

The Irish Literary Revival (also called the Irish Literary Renaissance, nicknamed the Celtic Twilight) was a flowering of Irish literary talent in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The literary movement was associated with a revival of interest in Ireland's Gaelic heritage and the growth of Irish nationalism from the middle of the 19th century. The poetry of James Clarence Mangan and Samuel Ferguson and Standish James O'Grady's History of Ireland: Heroic Period were influential in shaping the minds of the following generations. Others who contributed to the build-up of national consciousness during the 19th century included poet and writer George Sigerson, antiquarians and music collectors such as George Petrie and the Joyce brothers, editors such as Matthew Russell (of the Irish Monthly), scholars such as John O'Donovan and Eugene O'Curry and nationalists such as Charles Kickham and John O'Leary. In 1882 the Gaelic Union established the Gaelic Journal (Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge), the first important bilingual Irish periodical with the help of Douglas Hyde, with David Comyn as editor.

The early literary revival had two geographic centres, in Dublin and in London, and William Butler Yeats travelled between the two, writing and organising. In 1888 he published Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, a compilation of pieces by various authors of the 18th and 19th centuries. He had been assisted by Douglas Hyde, whose Beside the Fire, a collection of folklore in Irish, was published in 1890. In London in 1892, along with T. W. Rolleston, and Charles Gavan Duffy, he set up the Irish Literary Society. Back in Dublin he founded the National Literary Society in the same year, with Douglas Hyde as first President. Meanwhile, the more radical Arthur Griffith and William Rooney were active in the Irish Fireside Club and went on to found the Leinster Literary Society.

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