A collection of eighteen critical essays and twenty-six translations spanning the career of one of the found­ing intellects of Irish Studies, the Selected Writings of John V. Kelleher on Ireland and Irish America consists of five accessible sections. The first gathers Kelleher’s essays on the most widely known Irish cultural phe­nomenon—the literary renaissance of the early twentieth century. Part two contains his judicious assessments of Irish literature in its post-Revolutionary phase. The third section includes Kelleher’s in­sightful essays on the experience of the Irish in America. The fourth section contains essays that ex­amine early Irish literature and culture, opening with a benchmark essay for Irish Studies, “Early Irish His­tory and Pseudo-History,” which was read at the inau­gural meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies in 1961. The collection concludes with Kelleher’s translations and adaptations of poems in Old, Middle, and Modern Irish, illustrating his com­mand of the language at every stage.

John V. Kelleher is a professor emeritus of Irish Studies at Harvard University, where he taught for over forty years. He has written groundbreaking es­says on the earliest Old Irish corpus of annals, genealogies, and heroic tales; on ideas of Celticism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; on the Irish Renaissance accomplishments of William Butler Yeats and James Joyce; and on the fiction of Frank O’Connor and Sean O’Faolain. His essays have de­fined terms and set boundaries for the study of the immigrant and ethnic cultures of Irish America.

Charles Fanning is a professor of English and his­tory, as well as the director of Irish and Irish Immi­gration Studies, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His books include The Irish Voice in America: 250 Years of Irish-American Fiction, The Exiles of Erin: Nineteenth-Century Irish-American

Fiction, and Finley Peter Dunne and Mr. Dooley: The Chicago Years. He has edited New Perspectives on the Irish Diaspora, James T. Farrell’s Chicago Stories, Studs Lonigan, and Mr. Dooley and the Chicago Irish.

“Selected Essays of John V. Kelleher on Ireland and Irish America represents the essence of thought and learning of one of the outstanding scholars in Irish Studies. They are highly original and many of them are germinal. Pro­fessor Kelleher brings his unparalleled knowledge of the Irish annals and sagas to bear on various dimensions of Irish Studies. This outstanding volume is graced by a very fine introduction by the editor, Charles Fanning, which puts Professor Kelleher’s life and work into historical perspective.”—Emmet Larkin, University of Chicago