SOURCE: “The Irish Novel: Exile, Resignation, or Acceptance,” in Wascana Review, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1967, pp. 5-17.

In the following essay, Caswell discusses the fiction of Brian Moore, Kate O'Brien, Frank O'Conner, and Brinsley MacNamara.

It is a commonplace in the study of modern Irish literature that the Irish literary revival, with the somewhat doubtful exception of George Moore and with the singular exception of James Joyce, produced few novelists of note. Perhaps Joyce is sufficient for a multitude of novelists, but the fact of their scarcity is strange when we recall the plentitude of Irish poets, dramatists and short-story writers. However, between Moore's The Lake (1905) and Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914) no Irish fiction writer of significance chose to work in the novel form. An exception might be made for James Stephens' The Charwoman's Daughter (1912) and Demi-Gods (1914), but these works, being much closer to...