Irish Authors: Ireland & The Fiction Author | Storytelling & The Celtic DNA

As a fiction author from Ireland, I’m proud of the literary history of my country, North and South. Here is why Irish authors punch above our weight.

Click on the image to see the fiction books I have released so far. Both Inside Iris and Anna’s Awakening are available for purchase on Kindle and paperback from Amazon.

The island of Ireland, both North and South, have had a literary pedigree which is second to none thanks to our Irish authors. With a combined population of just over 6.5 million people, it is smaller than many of the larger cities in the world. When you consider that the population of London has over 9 million people alone, it shows just how small Ireland is in comparison to its most significant and nearest neighbour.

One area I have always been interested in is history. I have loved learning about WWI and WWII, areas of ancient history, like Rome and Egypt, and the history of my own country. As there are areas of Ireland’s past that are well known, I like to dig around in relation to my other love – reading and literature.

Since my university days, I have loved Irish writers, like Samuel Beckett, Bram Stoker, James Joyce, and Seamus Heaney. When you study English Literature at university in Ireland, you would barely stand a chance to avoid those names.

In particular, I have always looked at the four Nobel Prizes Irish authors have won in the field of literature with pride and great respect. The names of WB Yeats, George Bernhard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, and Seamus Heaney have immense weight within the literary world in Ireland and are revered by many.

As I consider how Ireland has such a love of the Irish author, and storytelling in general, I know there are a few nucleotides within every Irish person’s DNA that loves ‘a good yarn’, as we say in Ireland. It is something that really is engrained within Irish people and, within this blog, I hope to elaborate on this and the relationship between Ireland and the fiction author.

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Word of Mouth

The Irish, like other Celtic nations, have an incredibly rich oral storytelling history. The Irish storytelling traditions through Irish storytellers known as the Seanchaí were considered to be the entertainment in ancient Ireland.

These ‘custodians of Irish history’ were able to recite stories of wisdom and folklore. To have such vessels of storytelling knowledge in the ancient Irish world has no doubt passed its way down through the generations, so the people of today have the same love of stories as their ancestors did.

In fact, there are still people to this day who follow the traditions of the Seanchaí over two-thousand years later. One such Irish cultural speaker is a lady called Marianne McShane, raised in the town of Bangor, County Down – where I now live. Marianne and other oral storytellers in Ireland have the gift of being able to bring traditional, old stories to life for younger audiences.

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The Auld’ ns Are The Good’ ns

Three of the most famous older fiction authors of Ireland are listed below. As an Irish fiction author, these three names are inescapable, and their works transcend Dublin, Belfast, and Ireland, taking the stories they wove into the wider world beyond. Here are the three authors and why I feel they inspired me as a modern-day Belfast author.

Irish Authors: Bram Stoker

‘Born in Ireland in 1847, Bram Stoker studied Mathematics at Dublin’s Trinity College and embarked on his long-time role as an assistant to actor Sir Henry Irving in the 1870s. He also began carving out a second career as a writer, publishing his first novel, The Primrose Path, in 1875. Stoker published his most famous work, Dracula, in 1897, though he died before the fictional vampire would achieve widespread popularity through numerous film and literary adaptations in the 20th century.’

Source – Biography.com

My two favourite novels of all time are Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As I hinted to in my 5 Villains I Wish I Could Write In 2020 creative writing blog, I have always had a fascination with the ‘bad guy’. In the case of these two gothic novels, Frankenstein’s creature and Count Dracula are two of the most famous gothic characters in literature.

Many people view these character as ‘monsters’. However, I have always seen these characters as having more depth that heightened my sense of curiosity, even from a young age. Like many fans of horror, I have always been intrigued by such characters and found them much more interesting than the ‘good guys’ trying to kill them.

I love how a fiction author from Ireland will forever be considered gothic literature royalty.

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Irish Authors: James Joyce

‘James Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet and short-story writer. He published Portrait of the Artist in 1916 and caught the attention of Ezra Pound. With Ulysses, Joyce perfected his stream-of-consciousness style and became a literary celebrity. The explicit content of his prose brought about landmark legal decisions on obscenity. Joyce battled eye ailments for most of his life, and he died in 1941.’

Source – Biography.com

What I loved about Joyce and Samuel Beckett’s prose, was the stream of consciousness. As the source from Biography.com states above, this style was perfected by James Joyce and he became famous for it.

Books like Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist were much more accessible than Joyce’s archetypal works of Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake. Even though I have admittedly failed on numerous attempts to get through my copy of Ulysses, I have been blown away by what I have read. The fact that James Joyce wrote such timeless, albeit difficult, novels as well as managing to develop the stream of conscious style as his own continues to blow my mind.

What an incredible writer!

Irish Authors: Jonathan Swift

‘Irish author, clergyman and satirist Jonathan Swift grew up fatherless. Under the care of his uncle, he received a bachelor’s degree from Trinity College and then worked as a statesman’s assistant. Eventually, he became dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. Most of his writings were published under pseudonyms. He best remembered for his 1726 book Gulliver’s Travels.’

Source – Biography.com

What can I say about Jonathan Swift? My imagination has been inspired by his work ever since the first days that I watched movies of, and latterly read, Gulliver’s Travels.

As a child, I always had a curiosity about mysterious islands, rainforests, and explorers who were brave enough to risk their lives to advance our knowledge of the world around us.

The worlds of Lilliput, Brobdingnag, and Laputa, among others, are so rich with imagination and description. When I share creative writing advice about how to write settings, I always think of Jonathan Swift and how magnificent and strange his worlds are.

To create such beautiful worlds as a fiction author from Ireland in the 1700’s is amazing!

I am proud of the literary history of my country. Like many of us, there may be something of a bias toward the fiction authors of our native lands, and I am no different in this respect. The writers I have listed throughout this entire article have smitten me in one way or another with their work.

As a playwright in my early writing years, I was obsessed with Beckett and Shaw. Beckett’s Waiting For Godot and Endgame blew me away. I remember sitting in my university lectures watching DVDs of them play, thinking, ‘God, I’d love to write a play!’

That innocent thought turned into me writing my first play. That led to me writing more and then going to Queen’s University in Belfast to do my MA. There I was steeped in the literary world, read and write most of the time and grew as a writer.

Irish people, north and south, are united in many ways even if, at times, politicians would see it otherwise. As an island, we are intrinsically linked in our love of storytelling, writing, and the appreciation of literature. The fact that we love to hear ‘a good yarn’ and to have ‘a good aul blether’ means that we will continue to love Irish authors as well as, poets, playwrights, and movies for years to come.

Stories are in our bones, in our lungs, and coded within the nucleotides of our Celtic DNA. As I wrote in Inside Iris, that which is in our DNA is a gift. Our gift is a love of storytelling. Embrace it!