Eve Patten is Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute and Professor of English at Trinity College, Dublin, where she is a Fellow. A scholar in nineteenth and twentieth-century literature and cultural history, she worked for the British Council before joining Trinity as a lecturer in 1996. She specializes in the modern Irish and British novel and was a regular reviewer of new Irish fiction for the Irish Times and other publications for several years.

Paul Delaney is Associate Professor in the School of English, and a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. He is a scholar of twentieth-century and contemporary Irish writing, with particular focus in post-independence Irish literary culture and short fiction. He has written widely on Irish literature in peer-reviewed journals and publications. He joined Trinity as a lecturer in 2001, having completed his PhD at the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Research at the University of Kent (Canterbury) where he was a Chevening Scholar.

• Editors' Introduction


• 1: George Egerton (Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright): Mammy


• 2: James Joyce: Two Gallants


• 3: Liam O'Flaherty: The Sniper


• 4: Elizabeth Bowen: Unwelcome Idea


• 5: James Stephens: A Rhinoceros, Some Ladies, and a Horse


• 6: Brendan Behan: The Confirmation Suit


• 7: John McGahern: Sierra Leone


• 8: Val Mulkerns: Four Green Fields


• 9: Dara Ó Conaola: I nGleic (In a Pickle)


• 10: William Trevor: Two More Gallants


• 11: Mary O'Donnell: The Black Church


• 12: Éilís Ní Dhuibhne: Miss Moffat Goes to Town


• 13: Mirsad Ibisevic: Emigrant


• 14: Caitlín Nic Íomhair: Cíocras (Relentless)


• 15: Melatu Uche Okorie: Arrival


• 16: Kevin Power: Catastrophe


• 17: Caitriona Lally: Tramlines