Cork University Press

Flown the Nest missing manuscript found

On 18th June 2008 I was on the telephone with Eilis Ward, who is in the department of political science and sociology at NUI Galway. I had asked Eilis to write the foreword for the reprint of Bird’s Nest Soup which Cork University Press was bringing back into print as there was sustained demand after the broadcast of Remembering Hanna Greally on RTE’s Documentary on One radio programme.

Eilis had researched the life of Hanna Greally and she was telling me more about Hanna’s life. She told me that Hanna had written two more books, one was Coolamber Manor which had never been published in book form but it had been serialized in nine parts in the Roscommon Champion in 1972. There was another manuscript but details about it were sketchy and it was now lost.

 

After the telephone call I went into the Cork University Press warehouse to look for any old files on Bird’s Nest Soup. I remembered seeing an archive box on Bird’s Nest Soup when Cork University Press packed up its old files when the press moved from Crosses Green in Cork to its present location on the Pouladuff Road in Cork. After searching for half an hour I found the archive box marked “Bird’s Nest Soup and other manuscripts and correspondence with Hanna Greally”. Inside the box was a set of proofs of Bird’s Nest Soup which had yellowed with age. There was a copy of the 1971 edition of Bird’s Nest Soup, which has been edited in green ink by a staff member of Attic Press. There was a typed manuscript of 29 poems by Hanna Greally with titles such as “Love”, “the Peculiar Anatomy of Humans” and “Justice”. Finally there were two book manuscripts; I recognized one as Coolamber Manor. It was entitled “The Rehabilitation Story, Title Coolamber Manor by Johanna Greally. I had no knowledge of the other manuscript  which was called “Cook-Housekeeper at Large by Hanna Greally”, it was dated 3rd May 197… the last digit was difficult to read.

 

I thought that this could be the missing manuscript that Eilis Ward had mentioned earlier in the day. I immediately telephone Eilis who was so excited about the find that she wanted to come down to Cork straight away to read it. I posted a photocopy of Housekeeper at Large to Eilis and she read it in one sitting. Eilis enjoyed it and found it engrossing and quite moving in parts, she said it was snappily written, with a lot of very good passages.

 

The two manuscripts are now published together as one book called “Flown the Nest”.

Flown the Nest by Hanna Greally

Last year we published Bird's Nest Soup by Hannah Greally. In a few weeks we are publishing the sequel a large part of which was thought to be irretrievably lost and its discovery in 2008 was astonishing. It is a remarkable story, told with reticence and naturalness which makes it all the more moving.

Hanna Greally spent the best part of the 1940s and 1950s incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital in the Irish Midlands. Her terrible suffering was  recounted in Bird's Nest Soup (2008). Hanna's story continues with an account of her life in Coolamber Manor Rehabilitation Centre in Co. Longford, the place from where she hoped to gain freedom. If Hanna became part of the civil dead in St. Loman's we can now, for the first time, read alongside her restoration to citizenship and to personal autonomy.

Bird's Nest Soup, the story of psychiatric incarceration, was published three times since 1971, most recently in 2008. Here, now, we have the sequels published together: first, Coolamber Manor, the story of transition back into society and into independent adulthood; and second, Housekeeper at Large, the story of triumph, her account of her life as a woman of (modest) means and autonomy as a housekeeper and cook in England, published here for the first time. Indeed, it had been assumed that this manuscript was irretrievably lost and its discovery in 2008 was astonishing, not least given the renewed interest in the author arising from the re-publication of Bird's Nest Soup.

And what of the place of these books now? As with Bird's Nest Soup, we have here a combination of autobiographical narrative and social history. This mode of writing constitutes one important feature of the work. The books capture marginalised social worlds written from the inside, from the lives of the largely invisible and unnoticed which are part of our collective history and unconscious.

Here is a remarkable story, told with reticence and naturalness which makes it all the more moving.

Introduction by Dr. Eilis Ward, National University of Ireland Galway.
Hanna Greally (also known as Johanna or Joan Greally) was born in Athlone in 1925. She died in 1987.

JG Farrell

Farrell is now being re-discovered by a new generation of readers. He came back into the public eye last year when he was short listed for his novel the Siege of Krishnapur for the Best of the Booker prize winners over its 40 year history.

Salman Rushdie won the Best of the Booker with his Midnight's Children and he said of Farrell, “had he not sadly died so young, there is no question that he would today be one of the really major novelists of the English language. The three novels that he did leave are all in their different way extraordinary.” 

Jim Farrell died on August 11th 1979  in a fishing accident on the Sheeps Head Peninsula in the southwest of Ireland. He had only moved to his new home near Kilchrohane earlier that year.

Jim is buried in the Church of Ireland graveyard in Durrus, Ireland.

There is now a plaque close to where Jim lost his life.

Although Jim was born in Liverpool, his letters which we are publshing in October, JG Farrell in His Own Words: Selected Letters and Diaries edited by Lavinia Greacen, show that he considered himself Irish. These previously unpublished letters to a wide range of friends give the reader a glimpse of this private man. Ranging from childhood to the day before his death, Farrell’s distinctive letters have the impact of autobiography.

Jewels of the Kingdom revealed

The Iveragh Peninsula, often referred to as the ‘Ring of Kerry’, is one of Ireland’s most dramatic and beautiful landscapes. This cultural atlas, comprising over fifty individual chapters and case studies, provides the reader with a broad range of perspectives on the peninsula and the human interactions with it since prehistoric times to the present day.

Although not a conventional atlas, it contains many historic and newly commissioned maps. It also combines many different approaches towards understanding the distinctive character – both physical and human - of this unique landscape.

 The opening chapters explore the physical and environmental setting of the peninsula. Subsequent chapters deal with its development over the millennia and the influences that have shaped it. All aspects of Iveragh’s past and present are considered, using the evidence of disciplines such as archaeology, art-history, cartography, folklore, geography, geology, history, mythology and zoology. The range of topics that arise from this approach is tremendously wide, and occasionally surprising.

 Given its status as a peninsula projecting into the Atlantic, the history and culture of the Iveragh Peninsula have been moulded by external influences as well as by regional and national ones. Its story is multi-layered, involving the imprint of mythological as well as historic settlers and invaders. The peninsula has witnessed significant periods of transition, perhaps none more so than in the present era. This book seeks to deepen and illuminate our understanding of its landscape, history and heritage.

I Landscape
The Geology of the Iveragh Peninsula
The Devonian Tetrapod Trackway on Valentia Island
Kerry Geopark: An Aspiring European Geopark
The Physical Landscape of the Iveragh Peninsula
Iveragh’s Coast and Mountains
Man, Animals and the Environment in Iveragh
A Selection of Iveragh’s Flora
Birds of the Iveragh Peninsula
The Mountains of Iveragh: A Personal Journey
Iveragh’s Mountain Pilgrimages
Landscape, Myth and Imagination in Iveragh
Milesians
The Toponymy of the Peninsula of Uíbh Ráthach
An Archaic Dimension in the Toponymy of Uíbh Ráthach
The Early Ecclesiastical Toponymy of Uíbh Ráthach

II Early Iveragh
Prehistory: Settlement and Ritual in Iveragh
Rock Art
The Derrynane Horn
Miss Butler’s Iveragh Watercolours
Early Medieval Iveragh, ad 400–1200
Illaunloughan: An Early Iveragh Monastery and its Shrine
Fíonán of Iveragh
Skellig Michael: Monastic Island Retreat in the Atlantic
Skellig Michael: The German Connection
St Michael’s Well and Skellig Michael
The Vikings and Iveragh
Medieval Iveragh: Kingdoms and Dynasties
Ballycarbery Castle
The ‘Conquest’ of the Iveragh Peninsula: Mapping and Surveying, c.1598–c.1700
William Petty and the Iveragh Peninsula – Three Mysteries
Powell’s 1764 Map of Nedeen

III Historic Iveragh
Alexander Nimmo and the Mapping of Iveragh, 1811–12
Alexander Nimmo (1783-1832)
Daniel O’Connell and Iveragh
Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill
O’Connell and France
Cahersiveen
The Great Famine in Iveragh
Kenmare Lace
The Lansdowne Estate in Iveragh under the Agency of William Steuart Trench
Kenmare: Origins and Development
Derreen: A Landlord’s Garden
The Eviction of Cable O’Leary
Connecting South Kerry
The Kingdom in the Wires: The North Atlantic Telegraph Cables on the Iveragh Peninsula
Valentia Island
The Fight for Independence in Iveragh, 1914–22
John Golden – An Iveragh Fenian
Tourism and the Ring: Past and Present

IV Cultural Traditions
The Food Culture Of The Iveragh Peninsula
The Sporting Heritage Of Iveragh
Waterville Golf Links
Songs And Music Of The Iveragh Peninsula
Ole Mørk Sandvik’s Visit To Iveragh
Uíbh Ráthach And The Irish Language
Tomás Rua Ó Súilleabháin
An Iveragh Writer Of Our Time
Uíbh Ráthach And The Evolution Of Irish Folklore
The Iveragh Seine Boat
Puck Fair, Killorglin

V Contemporary Iveragh
Contemporary Economic Development In Iveragh
Peat And Energy Production
Demographic Change On The Iveragh Peninsula, 1926–2006
Iveragh’s Uplands: Farming And Society
Contemporary Change And Planning In The Iveragh Landscape
Sneem

VI Representing Iveragh
Jack B. Yeats And Iveragh
Paul Henry’s Iveragh Paintings
The Kerry School Of Painting, 1971–90
Pauline Bewick: Painting Iveragh
The Cill Rialaigh Project
Endnotes

Hardback Available July 17th: 2009
Printed Pages: 512
Size: 299 x 237mm
ISBN: 9781859184301

Manuscript missing for 300 years describes the Natural History of Ireland

Philip O’Sullivan Beare, who was from West Cork, wrote the Zoilomastix in 1626 while he was in exile in Spain to refute a book written in 1188 by Giraldus Cambrensis, which was very derogatory of Ireland and the Irish people. Cambrensis’s book underwent a revival at the end of the sixteenth century as a form of propaganda to justify the Elizabethan conquest and cruel suppression of Ireland. The English wanted to give the impression that the Irish were barbarous so that Spain and France would not send help to support the Irish rebellions against the English. —The Natural History of Ireland   (ISBN 978 185918 439 4, hbk, 384 pp, 234 x 156mm, €39/£35). 

 

 

 

 

 

The handwritten manuscript of the Zoilomastix was lost for nearly 300 years; it was found at the University of Uppsala, Sweden in 1932. The manuscript was written in Latin and it appears here for the first time in English.  The Natural History of Ireland highlights Philip O’Sullivan Beare’s reaction to these propagandist texts denigrating Ireland. The book starts with a description of Ireland from twenty-one authors followed by sections on the natural habitat and features, such as rivers, plants, animals, fish and birds and the geology of Ireland. Species listed are named in four languages, including Irish. There is a description of Ireland by the regions. The book finishes with a section on the purgatory of St Patrick’s including a description of how St Patrick expelled snakes from Ireland. An introduction by Denis O’Sullivan gives an overall history of the O’Sullivans and Philip in particular.
 
 

Denis C. O’Sullivan was a consultant urologist at Cork University Hospital and the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork and a Clinical Lecturer in Urology at University College Cork. After retirement he graduated in Ancient Classics from University College Cork.

Cork University Press acclaimed by the TLS

In a recent article giving an overview of academic publishing in Irish Studies, Toby Barnard of Oxford University wrote in the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) … Yet only one Irish University, Cork maintained its own press...it favoured studies that were innovative in methodology and bold in crossing disciplinary boundaries. These attributes showed most tellingly in the series of Field Day monographs, "Critical Conditions", where musicology, celtic studies, literature and history met. It was here, for example, that the exciting exercises in comparative literature of Joep Leersen were brought to proper notice in Britain and Ireland.
 
At the same time, Cork University Press devoted considerable care to the appearance of its publications. Its ability to combine fine cartography and many illustrations made it the local equivalent of Yale. Furthermore some of its titles, such as the sumptuous and illuminating Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape and Willie Smyth's Map-making, Landscape and Memory, were commercial successes-deservedly so. The arts and crafts ensemble of the Honan Chapel, sited among the university buildings in Cork, and the planned and planted landscapes of eighteenth-century Ireland, have also received similar generous treatment.
 
The TLS which began publishing in 1902 is acknowledged as the leading world-wide literary journal offering comprehensive coverage not just of the latest and most important publications, in every subject, in several languages - but also current theatre, opera, exhibitions and film.
 
Toby Barnard, Textual healing; Ireland, land of scholars and publisher saints, Times Literary Supplement, May 8, 2009

Elizabeth Bowen: New Critical Perspectives

Recently, Elizabeth Bowen has been recognised as being as radically important to our understanding of twentieth-century literature as Samuel Beckett and she is now considered among the most highly significant writers of the twentieth century. This critical collection of essays devoted solely to Bowen’s work and it is intended to broaden the critical framework of Bowen scholarship and to extend Bowen criticism by more clearly mapping her works’ position in relation to contemporary critical concerns and its location in relation to twentieth-century literature generally.

 

Edited by Susan Osborn who is a critic, novelist, and poet and lectures in the Department of English at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

 

 

Combining close textual analysis with theoretically informed readings, in this groundbreaking collection, this group of leading international scholars explores how Bowen’s disruptive and deeply unconventional narratives encourage us to read her as one of the most innovative writers of modern fiction, a true progenitor of modernism.

 

Contents

1. Unstable compounds: Bowen's Beckettian affinities - Sinéad Mooney
2. How to measure this unaccountable darkness between the trees: the strange relation of style and meaning in The Last September - Susan Osborn
3. Dead letters and living things: historical ethics in The House in Parisand The Death of the Heart - Eluned Summers-Bremner
4. Mumbo-jumbo: the haunted world of The Little Girls - June Sturrock
5. She-ward bound: Elizabeth Bowen as a sensationalist writer - Shannon Wells-Lassagne
6. Territory, space, modernity: Elizabeth Bowen's The Demon Lover and Other Stories and wartime London - Shafquat Towheed
7. Narrative, meaning and agency in The Heat of the Day - Brook Miller, with Luke Elward, TessaHempel and Philip Kollar 

 

Knock is co-winner of the James S. Donnelly, Sr. award for Books in History

Knock:  The Virgin's Apparition in Nineteenth Century Ireland by Eugene Hynes and  published by Cork University Press has been selected as a co-winner of the tenth annual  James S. Donnelly, Sr. award for  Books in History and the Social Sciences presented by the American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS).   - Knock: The Virgin's Apparition in Nineteenth- Century Ireland  (ISBN 978 185918 440 0, Hbk, 400 pp, 234 x 156mm, €49/£39).

On August 21, 1879 in a poor rural village in the western county of Mayo over a dozen people saw a bright silvery-white light outside the gable of the local Catholic church and within the light the Virgin Mary, St Joseph and St John the Evangelist. From a neglected memoir dating from 1880 Hynes steps inside the shoes of a local man who describes the scene in Knock for half a century before the apparition. The timing and location of the apparition is explained by the combination of several factors.

Hynes shines an important new sociological light on nineteenth century Ireland. He provides a readable and scholarly account of rural Catholic life in the time leading up to the apparition at Knock. He weaves a rich description of the people and events into a comprehensive analysis of the social, political and economic context within which the apparition occurred.

Eugene Hynes is a native of east Galway and is Associate Professor of Sociology at Kettering University, Michigan

http://www.corkuniversitypress.com/epages/corkuniversitypress.storefront/EN/product/9781859184400

 

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Ivor Browne: Music and Madness has been short listed for the Argosy Irish Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award

Today Ivor Browne: Music and Madness has been short listed for the Argosy Irish Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award. www.corkuniversitypress.com

Cork University Press published Ivor Browne: Music and Madness in 2008 and it has been reprinted in hardback five times. A new softback edition is available from today €14.95.

In a career spanning over 50 years, Professor Ivor Browne has been at the forefront of psychiatric care in Ireland.

Music and Madness is a fascinating insight into one of Ireland's true thinker-pioneers, and also an insight into Ireland itself.

This is an open, honest and deeply personal account of Ivor Browne's personal and professional journey to discover the sense behind much of what we regard as madness. His central message is that healing and integration are possible, if we are willing to 'unfreeze' our inner lives and experience genuine hurt and pain that we have disavowed. This book is written in a style that is accessible and compassionate; it leaves one with renewed hope and with a reverence for the mystery embodied in every human being.

Dr Tony Bates, psychologist

This year, for the first time, the overall winners in nine of the ten categories will be chosen by a public vote http://www.irishbookawards.com/PublicVote.aspx , in conjunction with the Irish Literary Academy. The winners will be announced at a gala awards ceremony which will take place in The Round Room at the Mansion House, Dawson St, Dublin 2 on Wednesday, May 6th 2009.

Listowel Food Book Cornucopia Award

 Tuesday Evening the 9th of December sees the presentation of the Listowel Food Fair 2008 Irish Food Book of the Year Award at the Cornucopia vegetarian restaurant of 19 Wicklow Street, Dublin 2 . This year’s winner was a book entitled Cornucopia at home. Cornucopia at home is a colourful collection of popular recipes from Cornucopia vegetarian restaurant of Wicklow Street in Dublin 2.

Jimmy Deenihan Chairman of Listowel Food Fair said that:  “The inaugural Listowel Food Fair ‘National Food Book’ of the year award represents another exciting milestone in the history of the event. Listowel is situated smack in the middle of the North Kerry plane which is one of the most intensive dairy farming regions in the country. Listowel is also home to Kerry Ingredients the largest food ingredient company in Ireland. Listowel is renowned for its literary heritage and has produced more published writers per head of population than any other part of the country. John B Keane wrote several short stories and articles related to food. Because of this very strong and undisputed connection between literature and food in Listowel the committee of Listowel Food Fair decided to introduce a new element to the programme in 2008 ‘The National Food Book of the Year Award’. The book was chosen as it is a family cookbook for everyday use which can guide families to cook good wholesome, fresh, nutritious foods using local produce as much as possible.”

Cornucopia at home is a cook book for anyone with a passion for healthy, feel-good home cooking. Readers can take their pick from a tempting array of hearty soups, salads, imaginative main courses, crusty breads and sumptuous desserts. Including options for vegans, coeliacs and those on a variety of special diets, these beautifully illustrated, informative and easy to master recipes will bring joy and satisfaction to every table they reach. The layout of the book is excellent with photographs, descriptions of recipes as wheat free, dairy free or gluten free and the incorporation of a book mark with metric measurement conversions which prevents lots of page turning. 

Announcing the award at the Listowel Food Fair, local publican and Journalist Billy Keane described the book as “flavoured with heart-warming delectable, scrumptious recipes. A must for all aspiring and established cooks”. 

“Packed with recipes and detailed information on the ingredients and fuelled by the spirit of the restaurant it comes from.  Cornucopia at home will be a very useful reference for anyone wanting to create simple, tasty and healthy food at home”. 

Denis Cotter, Café Paradiso, author of Paradiso Seasons and Wild Garlic, Gooseberries ……and me.

“A true and inspiring generosity has been created and sustained over more than two decades in Cornucopia, establishing this unique food destination as one of the iconic Dublin addresses.  Cornucopia has fed its customers in many ways, giving us great food that speaks of the concerns of the world and its culinary cultures, and inflecting those concerns with the spirit of the city.  Deirdre and the Cornucopia team have achieved something of true, enduring value and Cornucopia at home celebrates that achievement”.

John McKenna, The Bridgestone Guides.

Hardback edition - 2008
Price: €39
Printed Pages: 476
Size: 250 x 198mm
ISBN: 9780955226144
Buy this book