Irish Literature & Cinema

Edited by Robert Welch.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
[For print version locations see UofT Catalogue]
This all-purpose A-Z one-volume companion covers authors (native Irish and Anglo-Irish), works, topics, styles, forms, genres, literary themes, and terms in Irish literature. With more than 2,000 entries, this guide covers sixteen hundred years of Irish writing.

Edited by Julia M. Wright.
Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
[For print version locations see UofT Catalogue]
Themes such as religion, the cultural history of gender, translation, and nationhood shape this 2-volume set in its coverage of nearly 1,500 years of Irish literature. Organized chronologically—from The Middle Ages to Contemporary Literature: Print, Stage, and Screen—the lengthy entries contain substantial bibliographies.

Edited by Robert Hogan.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979.
Covering about 500 Irish authors, this dictionary includes critical and biographical articles on literary genres such as folklore, literary organizations and publications, and foreign authors who have greatly contributed to Irish literature. The work also includes a bibliography, a chronology, an index, and an introductory article on Gaelic literature.

By James M. Cahalan.
New York: G.K. Hall, 1992.
Providing an historical and political context to Irish writing from 1600 to the early 1990s, this volume identifies, explains, and interrelates events in Irish literature and culture. Each year is arranged into such categories as fiction, drama, poetry, art, prose, non-fiction, and periodicals. The chronology includes a biographical details and a map, as well as indexes for persons, titles and subjects.

By James M. Cahalan.
Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1978 -.
This series provides detailed critical essays—often by well-known critics—on a wide range of authors. Works by anonymous authors (e.g. Táin Bó Cúailnge) are listed in the title section. Most essays are available online in Literature Criticism Online, a database comprising 10 print series and consisting of more than 250 volumes compiled over the past 30 years. Using this online collection, you can search individual series titles (e.g. Contemporary Literature Criticism) all together, in a selected combination, or individually. You can find articles on such topics as Irish nationalism in literature, the Irish novel, and the Irish literary renaissance. Arranged alphabetically, the entries provide in-depth critical essays on an author’s work, along with biographical facts, a list of major works, and related sources. Usually, the essays give an overview of a writer’s work or themes.