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The Playboy of the Western World and Two Other Irish Plays
The Playboy of the Western World and Two Other Irish Plays
Aug 12, 2025 12:37 AM

Author:J.M. Synge,Sean O'Casey,W B Yeats,W. A. Armstrong

The Playboy of the Western World and Two Other Irish Plays

A murderer becomes the toast of the village as his charm negates his crime. A young countess saves her tenants from starvation, but only by selling her soul to the Devil. The sleepy parish of Nyadnanave sees a vision of a cockerel that dares the inhabitants to break the shackles of Church and State. All these plays were met with moral outrage and rioting in their native Ireland.

Yeats's 'The Countess Cathleen' (1892), J. M. Synge's 'The Playboy of the Western World' (1907) and O'Casey's 'Cock-a-doodle Dandy' (1949) emerged from a period of traumatic change for Ireland. While the plays bear witness to the immmense social upheavals of the turn of the twentieth century, they also represent a new age of Irish drama that rose from the turmoil, and their lessons ring true to this day.

Reviews

Old-fashioned, testosterone-fuelled escapism and Tanner is a chiselled protagonist straight out of the pages of the old Commando comics

—— Mail on Sunday

Sharpe for the Blitz years...a meaty, all action yarn!

—— Sunday Telegraph

Holland is a superb historian who knows his stuff, and his descriptions of the action are terrific

—— Daily Telegraph

Has the sure touch of someone who knows their subject and enjoys it

—— Daily Mail

This is a well-researched page-turner that keeps you hungry for more. An exciting tale full of historical details and action

—— Soldier magazine

A gripping wartime classic

—— Daily Mail

corker of a novel...this retro bonkbuster reprises roles for rock-star boyfriends and super-bitches. Let's hope half of it is true

—— Independent

Tease is sensational...and destined to be the book of the beach this summer

—— Time Out

Tease is a whirlwind of nipple tassels, glitter and besotted suitors. Oh la la!

—— Elle

It transported me back to the halcyon days, pre-chick lit, when no central character worth her salt bored on about how to get a boyfriend because she already had half a dozen men, plus a girlfriend and, perhaps, a pet priest...No wonder grown women in the audience were whooping approval as Blaize read from her novel with breathy aplomb...

—— Rowan Pelling , Daily Telegraph

The voices of bookish Louisa and bold Clem - sisters 'as different as white chocolate and seaweed' - alternate in Glass's wrenching tale as the strong-willed sibs cope with love, loss and each other.

—— Good Housekeeping

Glass writes with a bracing emotional and intellectual intensity, and . . . so accurately depicts the complexities of the sororal bond that it's no surprise to find that she hails from a sisterhood of two as well.

—— Elle

A lovely and heartbreaking book . . . Julia Glass writes the sort of novels you wish would go on forever; such is your immediate attachment to her impeccably drawn characters . . . [she] offers up intimate examinations of the lives on complex people, recognizable for their insecurities and strengths, failings and successes, humor and sadness, loves and loves lost.

—— Miami Herald

An arresting story that is both thorny and complex ... A wonderful novelist will expose truths that elude us in the everyday. [Glass's] eye in I See You Everywhere takes in blind spots and makes them mesmerizing

—— New York Daily News

Julia Glass is a writer firmly in control

—— Dallas Morning News

Glass elegantly captures what it means to be an independent and spirited contemporary woman

—— Chicago Tribune

Beautifully written

—— Image Magazine

It is expertly written in its way, and oddly compelling - like a slushy movie you can't help but respond to

—— Guardian

Moving and thoughtful ... Poignant and compelling, this lyrical novel lifts the veil on an internal world of love, rivalry and misunderstanding; an intricate depiction of sibling relationships

—— Good Book Guide

A beautifully evocative and intelligent novel

—— Woman & Home

This impassioned tale is a gripping read

—— James Smart , The Guardian

Jones is fabulous...offering titbits of danger and discord, yet keeping a cool matter-of-fact tone for the big horrors

—— Sunday Times

Her second novel is a must-read; a devastating, brilliant account of what happens when everything a man believes in...begins to crumble

—— Cath Kidson Magazine

Full of danger and discord

—— Sunday Times Summer Reading
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