SOURCE: “Contemporary Literature, 1940-80,” in A Short History of Irish Literature, University of Notre Dame Press, 1986, pp. 210-48.

In the following essay, Deane presents an overview of Irish literature between 1940 and 1980.

Fiction

In the thirties and forties of this century, a number of writers emerge whose careers as artists are indistinguishable from their crusades as men of letters against the philistinism and parochialism of the new state. Sean O'Faolain is the outstanding personality in a group which includes Austin Clarke, Patrick Kavanagh, Frank O'Connor, Peadar O'Donnell and Sean O'Casey. O'Faolain was editor of a literary magazine The Bell from 1940 to 1946; Peadar O'Donnell gave it a more emphatic left-wing orientation during his editorship from 1946 until the last number in 1954. The Bell followed the example of George Russell's (AE) magazines, The Irish Homestead (1905-23) and The Irish Statesman (1923-30), by becoming a focus for new writing and for the dissenting...