Description
Cover Image: Jason Leung on Unsplash.com
Cover Design: Fergal Condon
“Here, in a lovely new Irish edition, is the second batch of twenty stories from the unmistakable Dublin-born, New York-based, writer Maeve Brennan (1917–1993). This volume completes her published short fiction, though more of it may yet come to light as her reputation continues to grow—she moved apartments often, usually leaving things behind. A box of her papers turned up in a second-hand bookshop in Massachusetts in 1974, when she was fifty-seven and her mental health was in decline; on a visit to Dublin the previous summer, she’d left some people disconcerted. Her savage, exquisite 1940s’ novella, The Visitor, lay unnoticed in typescript in a university archive until 1997, when a unique fiction editor discovered it.
The editor was Christopher Carduff, who already that year, with The Springs of Affection, had begun to introduce Brennan’s writing to new generations of American readers. In all, he edited four books under her name, including this one, and The Long-Winded Lady, her contributions to ‘Talk of the Town’ in The New Yorker. Always anonymous, ‘Talk’ opened every issue of the magazine. The books he put together have gradually made their way to Ireland, where so much of Brennan’s work is rooted.
From about 1988, when he first heard of her, Carduff read Brennan’s writing professionally, but also with a passionate sympathy and commitment. He saw connections between pieces published years apart, often long after she’d written them. He understood the subtle social commentary and deep pain expressed in stories that earlier editors had read for laughs—or for the seasonal needs of a weekly magazine where fiction shared space with cartoons and fact pieces, and advertisements for luxury goods. Thanks to him, the four sections of this book click into place like pieces in a jigsaw, illuminating her genius and revealing her plan.”
—from Angela Bourke’s new introduction
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Maeve Brennan was born in Dublin in 1917 and moved with her family to Washington D.C. in 1934. She later settled in Manhattan and joined the staff of The New Yorker. She published two collections of short stories and a collection of essays during her lifetime. In the years following her death in New York in 1993, a novella The Visitor was found among her papers and published to great acclaim. All of her published work has since been reissued, making it available to readers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Angela Bourke first read Maeve Brennan’s The Springs of Affection in the 1990s while she was living on Cherryfield Avenue, Ranelagh, where Brennan grew up, and where those stories are set. Her biography, Maeve Brennan: Homesick at The New Yorker, was published in London and New York in 2004. Now full professor emerita at University College Dublin, she taught Irish-language literature, oral traditions, and cultural history there, and at several US universities. Her publications include books, articles, essays and fiction in Irish and English.
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Also available:
The Springs of Affection (stories) with an introduction by Anne Enright
The Long-Winded Lady (essays) with an introduction by Belinda McKeon
