Irish Books and Irish People

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Irish Books and Irish People, by Stephen Gwynn This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Irish Books and Irish People Author: Stephen Gwynn Release Date: August 8, 2007 [EBook #22264] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRISH BOOKS AND IRISH PEOPLE *** Produced by Melissa Er-Raqabi, Ted Garvin and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net IRISH BOOKS AND IRISH PEOPLE By STEPHEN GWYNN. DUBLIN The Talbot Press Ltd. 89 Talbot Street LONDON T. Fisher Unwin Ltd. 1 Adelphi Terrace CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION 1 NOVELS OF IRISH LIFE IN THE 7 NINETEENTH CENTURY A CENTURY OF IRISH HUMOUR 23 LITERATURE AMONG THE ILLITERATES: I.—THE SHANACHY 44 II.—THE LIFE OF A SONG 51 IRISH EDUCATION AND IRISH 65CHARACTER THE IRISH GENTRY 83 YESTERDAY IN IRELAND 97 [Pg 1] INTRODUCTION. My publisher must take at least some of the responsibility for reviving these essays. All bear the marks of the period at which they were written; and some of them deal with the beginnings of movements which have since grown to much greater strength, and in growing have developed new characteristics at the expense of what was originally more prominent.