Prose Literature of the Gaelic Revival, 1881-1921

While many if not most Gaelic writers of the Revival never seem to have paid more than lip service to the illiterate native speaker and while the more sophisticated and anesthetically committed among them knew that it would be a betrayal of their art as well as an absurdly artificial if not downright condescending gesture to act the country storyteller, the appeal of a linguistically competent audience was powerful enough to attract even so urbane a revivalist as William P. Ryan, who in a 1903 review urged the reading aloud to country folk of a new historical adventure novel on the grounds that 'book-shelves are all very well, but firesides are alive.'O'Leary, Philip is the author of 'Prose Literature of the Gaelic Revival, 1881-1921', published 1994 under ISBN 9780271010632 and ISBN 0271010630.