Sean O'Casey: Faber Critical Guide

Description

One of a series concerning the major plays of leading 20th-century playwrights. This guide introduces, explores and analyzes in detail the principal themes and styles of the work of Sean O'Casey. It also places it in the context of modern theatre, and includes a select bibliography.

Christopher Murray is Emeritus Professor of Drama and Theatre History in the School of English, Drama and Film at University College Dublin. A former editor of Irish University Review and chair of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (IASIL), he is author of Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: Mirror Up to Nation (1997) and Sean O'Casey Writer at Work: A Biography (2004), which the TLS described as 'definitive'. He has also edited Brian Friel: Essays, Diaries, Interviews 1964-1999 (1999) and Beckett at 100: The Centenary Essays (2006). His Selected Plays of George Shiels was published by Colin Smythe in 2008. and an edition of critical essays Alive in Time: The Enduring Drama of Tom Murphy appeared from Carysfort Press in 2010.

"I came of age in the Fascist-threatened thirties of the Great Depression. From my youthful vantage, the only steady-on democratic conscience was O'Casey's, a beam of light searching the darkness ahead for a sign of a humane polity."-Arthur Miller