John Millington Synge (1871-1909), one of Ireland’s greatest playwrights, graduated from Trinity College and then studied piano and violin on the Continent before turning to literature. His destiny was changed by a meeting with the poet W. B. Yeats, who suggested he go to Galway and the Aran Islands to live among the peasants. The experience inspired The Aran Islands (1907), Poemsand Translations (1910), and Synge’s plays: In the Shadow of the Glen (1903), Riders to the Sea (1904), The Well of the Saints (1905), The Tinker’s Wedding (1907), The Playboy of the Western World (1907), and the unfinished Deirdre of the Sorrows (1901).

 

Edna O‘Brien was educated in a convent and then trained as a pharmacist before publishing her first novel, The Country Girls (1960). She has gone on to publish numerous short story collections and novels, including Down by the River (1997) and In the Forest (2002) and nonfiction works such as Mother Ireland (1977). She lives in London.

 

Professor Robert Welch is Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ulster. He is the author of numerous works, including fiction in both English and in Irish; three collections of poetry, including The Blue Formica Table and Muskerry; and such works of criticism as The Abbey Theatre 1899-1999: Form and Pressure, Irish Poetry from Moore to Yeats, and The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature.