Censorship and the Irish Writer

Brad Kent is professor of British and Irish literatures at Université Laval.

• AbbreviationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: The Contours of Censorship, Politics, Polemics, and the International DialecticChapter One: Setting the Template: George Moore and the Public Face of ResistanceChapter Two: Evolving Tactics: Bernard Shaw, Relentless Antagonism, and Organised ResistanceChapter Three: The Scene Shifts to Ireland: James Joyce, Brinsley MacNamara, and Lennox RobinsonChapter Four: A Made-in-Ireland Censorship: Polemics and Institutional FormationChapter Five: A Made-in-Ireland Resistance: The Rise and Fall of the Irish Academy of LettersChapter Six: International Networking: Establishing Irish PENChapter Seven: Insularity and Reform: Irish PEN in the War YearsChapter Eight: Equivocal Values: Irish PEN in the Age of AppealChapter Nine: Aligning with Other Intellectuals: The Irish Association for Civil Liberty and Conservative Ireland’s Last Great Censorship Moral PanicChapter Ten: Towards the Liberalisation of Censorship: John McGahern, Edna O’Brien, and the Censorship Reform SocietyCodaAppendix: Table of Books by Irish Writers Banned in IrelandNotesBibliographyIndex

“In this highly valuable and timely study of censorship as an international dialectic, Brad Kent newly illuminates the experiences of censorship for Irish writers over a century of conflict and resistance. As he persuasively argues, this is a history best understood not merely as local battles or a national story but as part of a global movement for artistic integrity and freedom of expression.” - Margaret Kelleher, Chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama, University College Dublin “This is the book for which everyone concerned with the material conditions of Irish culture has been waiting. We have long understood, if only anecdotally, that censorship was instrumental in determining the direction of Irish writing for much of the twentieth century. With Brad Kent's superbly researched new book, we now understand why and how. This is scholarship that will endure.” - Chris Morash, Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing, Trinity College Dublin