Private Histories is a complete literary history of the American Irish during the first part of the twentieth century. Ron Ebest offers a fresh perspective on familiar novelists, dramatists, and poets, introduces readers to a number of important writers who are often overlooked, and reveals rarely considered aspects of Irish-American social history.
Ebest analyzes themes of particular importance to early twentieth-century Irish Americans-such as religion, marriage, family, eceonomic hardship, social status, and education-in the writings of well-known authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Eugene O'Neill. He also explores these issues in the works of lesser known authors such as the Vanity Fair satirist Anne O'Hagan, labor activist and novelist Jim Tully, muckraking journalist Clara Laughlin, and the mystery writer John T. McIntyre.
Ebest's highly readable style makes Private Histories an excellent book for undergraduate and graduate courses on Irish-American literature and history, as well as for general readers interested in this fascinating subject.
Show morePrivate Histories is a complete literary history of the American Irish during the first part of the twentieth century. Ron Ebest offers a fresh perspective on familiar novelists, dramatists, and poets, introduces readers to a number of important writers who are often overlooked, and reveals rarely considered aspects of Irish-American social history.
Ebest analyzes themes of particular importance to early twentieth-century Irish Americans-such as religion, marriage, family, eceonomic hardship, social status, and education-in the writings of well-known authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Eugene O'Neill. He also explores these issues in the works of lesser known authors such as the Vanity Fair satirist Anne O'Hagan, labor activist and novelist Jim Tully, muckraking journalist Clara Laughlin, and the mystery writer John T. McIntyre.
Ebest's highly readable style makes Private Histories an excellent book for undergraduate and graduate courses on Irish-American literature and history, as well as for general readers interested in this fascinating subject.
Show moreRon Ebest is assistant professor of literature and writing at St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley, St. Louis, Missouri.
“Ebest’s superb interdisciplinary study, Private Histories: The
Writing of Irish Americans, 1900–1935, follows in the tradition of
Charles Fanning’s landmark studies of this genre in the nineteenth
century and advances our knowledge of this literature. Private
Histories is both a definitive survey of Irish American writing in
the pre-depression era as well as a major historiographical
assessment of the role of this writing in shaping what is known
about Irish America in those years.” —History: Reviews of New
Books
“ . . . a critical literary history that compares the literary
representation of Irish American life in the early decades of the
20th century with the historical context . . . [T]he study is
particularly valuable for its recovery of a host of historically
significant but forgotten Irish American writers of the period-Jim
Tully, Ellen Glasgow, Kate Jordan, Donn Byrne, Anne O'Hagan, and
George Kelly, to name a few . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice
"This well-researched and erudite study belongs on the short list
of essential books on Irish-American culture in the
twentieth-century." —New Hibernia Review
“Often amusing, always articulate and intelligent, this period
study certainly leaves its audience with an awareness of and
appreciation for the transformative and formative years in
Irish-American literature as well as its place in the evolving
canon.” —Irish Literary Supplement
"Ebest . . . explores religion, family, marriage and more in the
work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, James T. Farrell and Eugene O'Neill.
It is in the work of lesser known authors (such as Anne O'Hagan,
Jim Tully, Clara Laughlin and John T. McIntyre) that Ebest perhaps
makes his most interesting contribution." —Irish America
“Ebest's extraordinarily broad review of Irish American writing and
scholarship is accompanied by insightful analysis and nuanced
observations. Undoubtedly, Private Histories will interest the
general reader and prove useful in undergraduate and graduate
courses in Irish American literature and history.” —Journal of
American Ethnic History
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