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O'GRADY ( Standish J. ). History of Ireland : The heroic period. [and, Cuculain and his contemporari

Currency:EUR Category:Antiques / Books & Manuscripts Start Price:10.00 EUR Estimated At:250.00 - 350.00 EUR
O'GRADY ( Standish J. ). History of Ireland : The heroic period. [and, Cuculain and his contemporari

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Auction Date:2012 Oct 20 @ 11:00 (UTC+1)
Location:38 Molesworth Street, Dublin, Dublin, ., Ireland
O'GRADY ( Standish J. ). History of Ireland : The heroic period. [and, Cuculain and his contemporaries]. London [Dublin printed] : Sampson Low … Dublin : E. Ponsonby … , 1878-80FIRST EDITION, with a map, pp (2), xxii, 267 and errata slip : (2), iv, 348, (2, adverts), (2, blank), 2 vols, cr 8vo, original dark purple cloth by Galwey of Dublin, with ticket : a nice, copy with bookplate of Mary Henrietta Balfour, Townley Hall, Co Louth, in each volume and the signature "M. I. Balfour / Townley Hall / from K. B. 1885" on each half-title. A seminal work. O’Grady developed an interest in ancient Irish literature after discovering O'Halloran’s History in a country house library. He produced two vols of a history of Ireland (1878 and 1880), centred on a politically and sexually bowdlerised retelling of the Ulster cycle. These were not commercially successful, but they popularised Cú Chulainn. They had a profound influence on W. B. Yeats and George Russell ; Yeats called O'Grady ‘father of the Irish literary revival’. At intervals throughout his career, O'Grady produced revised editions of the same material. He was hailed by the literary revival as a father figure and is portrayed respectfully, selectively and sometimes drunkenly by such memoirists as Yeats and Moore. He was ambivalent about the new movement and criticised theatrical dramatisations of the heroic tales as demeaning. His appeal extended to physical-force nationalists. Arthur Griffith praised him as an honest Unionist (a handy stick with which to beat other Unionists). Eoin MacNeill blamed O'Grady for infecting P. H. Pearse with an unhistorical and pagan imagery of self-regarding Celtic heroism. The work was, as O'Grady himself confessed, one of imagination. He knew no Irish, and did not try to learn it until 1899, and then with little success. He misspelt the name of his hero (using the form ‘Cu Culain’) and never bothered correcting his mistake ; as late as 1933 this misspelling was repeated on the English title-page of a translation of The Coming of Cuculain, published by the Gaelic League. But the importance of the History lay in its impact upon leading figures of the Irish literary revival. O'Grady's belief that Ireland had a continuous ‘race history’, and that this was centred in the imagination, the ‘legends’ which nations ‘make for themselves … that dim twilight region, where day meets night’, appealed to Yeats, who included no fewer than six of O'Grady's books in a list of the ‘thirty best Irish books’ in 1895. Yeats declared that it was after reading O'Grady that ‘I turned my back on foreign themes, decided that the race was more important than the individual, and began my “Wanderings of Oisin”’(CDIBB & ODNB).(2)HISTORY; IRELAND; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;