Ten books from Ireland
Ireland produced a disproportionate share of the books that changed English prose, and most of them were written in exile. This list keeps the Dubliners, the Gothic novelists and the playwrights together, where they can argue.
The list
- Dubliners — James Joyce, 1914. The best short-story collection in English, and the cleanest way into Joyce.
Read free at Project Gutenberg · print edition on Amazon - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — James Joyce, 1916. A portrait of an artist as a young egotist, written with extraordinary control of style.
Read free at Project Gutenberg · print edition on Amazon - Ulysses — James Joyce, 1922. The novel that changed what fiction could do, and much funnier than its reputation.
Read free at Project Gutenberg · print edition on Amazon - Gulliver's Travels — Jonathan Swift, 1726. The cruellest and most inventive satire in English, and still the best argument against complacency.
Read free at Project Gutenberg · print edition on Amazon - The Picture of Dorian Gray — Oscar Wilde, 1890. Aphorisms on one page and a genuinely disturbing moral structure on the next.
Read free at Project Gutenberg · print edition on Amazon - Dracula — Bram Stoker, 1897. The founding vampire novel, and a surprisingly clever piece of documentary storytelling.
Read free at Project Gutenberg · print edition on Amazon - Riders to the Sea — John Millington Synge, 1904. A one-act tragedy with no wasted word, and the best introduction to Synge's ear for speech.
Read free at Project Gutenberg · print edition on Amazon - The Well of the Saints — John Millington Synge, 1905. A comedy about the cost of a miracle, and Synge's most underrated play.
Read free at Project Gutenberg · print edition on Amazon - The Aran Islands — John Millington Synge, 1907. A travel memoir that doubles as a writer's notebook, and the source of Synge's stage language.
Read free at Project Gutenberg · print edition on Amazon - Pygmalion — Bernard Shaw, 1913. A comedy that is also a blunt argument about accent, money and who gets to be believed.
Read free at Project Gutenberg · print edition on Amazon
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