The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri, translated by Charles S. Singleton, introduced by Simone Marchesi and illustrated by Roberto Abbiati Princeton University Press, £25.00 / €29.99 Around half a century after its original completion, Princeton University Press has re-issued, in a single “handsome edition”, the complete translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy by American scholar Charles …
Dante’s Divine Comedy: A biography Joseph Luzzi Princeton University Press, £20.00 / €24.00 Author Joseph Luzzi, who gained his doctorate at Yale University, is the Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature at Bard College, a private arts college in the Hudson River Valley, New York, where he also teaches Italian Studies and film. His new…
The Uses of Idolatry William T. Cavanaugh Oxford University Press, £97.00 / €113.59 This book is important and difficult. Important because it orientates us in a changing political landscape, difficult because it does so in a discussion of a complicated topic, “idolatry”, drawing on profound thinkers, St Augustine and Jean-Luc Marion, in particular. I…
Finding Mangan: The Lives and Afterlives of Ireland’s National Poet Bridget Hourican Gill Books, €22.99 / £17.50 James Clarence Mangan was not always destined to be Ireland’s ‘national poet’. That place at that time in the 1830s had been long and largely filled by Thomas Moore. Today Moore has a large and challenging statue…
The Papers of Maurice FitzGerald, 18th Knight of Kerry: Volume 1: Disillusioned Unionist; Vol. 11: Rejected Emancipationist, edited by Adrian FitzGerald (Kingdom Books, €50.00 / £43.00) By Thomas McCarthy The life and public career of the 18th Knight of Kerry, Maurice FitzGerald, spanned the most turbulent last years of the Irish Parliament, the passing of the Act of…
Gaelic and Free: Memoirs of Pádraig O’Callaghan, edited by Elizabeth Scanlan & Brendan O’Callaghan (Lettertec Publishing, €20.00 / £17. 20 plus p+p; Lettertec, Carrigtwohill, Co. Cork T45 NX81; infor@lettertect.com) J. Anthony Gaughan Two issues dominated the life of Pádraig O’Callaghan: teaching and promoting the Irish language and striving for “an Ireland, Gaelic and Free”. O’Callaghan was…
Maynooth College Reflects on the Catechesis in the Life of the Church, edited by Jeremy Corley, Andrew Meszaros & John-Paul Sheridan, foreword by Bishop Michael Duignan (Messenger Publications, €14.95 / £12.95) This book consists of some 18 papers by writers directly associated for the most part with Maynooth College, and as such it represents…
Casimir Markievicz: A Polish Artist on Bohemian Dublin (1903-1913) An exhibition in the State Apartments of Dublin Castle, runs to September 14 2025; Co-produced by the Embassy of the Republic of Poland and the Office of Public Works. Entrance fee, €3.00; catalogue, €5.00. Count Markievicz, the Polish husband of the redoubtable Constance Gore-Booth, was an artist…
Telling the truth is dangerous: how Robert Dudley Edwards changed Irish history forever Neasa MacErlean (Tartaruga Books, £11.99 / €14.00) By Ciaran Brady Biographies and (worse) autobiographies of historians have become so common that one might imagine they were immensely interesting which, given the generally unexciting lives of scholars, they are not. There are,…
An Accidental Villain: A Soldier’s Tale of War, Deceit and Exile, by Linden MacIntyre (Random House Canada, £22.00 / €18.99). Ireland connections with Newfoundland are one of those topics readers are aware of, but rarely seem to receive detailed exploration. Here, however, is a book by an eminent Canadian writer and television reporter which will…
Peter Costello