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Finding Mangan Bridget Hourican

Finding Mangan By Bridget Hourican

Finding Mangan by Bridget Hourican


$50.99
Condition - Very Good
Only 1 left

Summary

An absorbing and innovative biography of Irelands national poet by a new literary talent.

Finding Mangan Summary

Finding Mangan: The many lives and afterlives of James Clarence Mangan by Bridget Hourican

June 1849: Dr William Wilde, passing a wretched hovel in Dublins Liberties, discovers James Clarence Mangan in a state of indescribable misery and squalor. Aged just 46, the man dubbed Irelands National Poet is about to succumb to the cholera epidemic that is gripping famine ravaged Ireland.

August 2008: Writer Bridget Hourican encounters Mangan during a Liberties lock-in with that other great Irish poet, Shane MacGowan, who found inspiration in Mangans poetry.

Alcoholic, opium addict, Romantic, Famine poet, Dublin street character and hero of James Joyce, the mercurial Mangan begins to obsess Bridget. The surviving biographical material - scant, subjective, sometimes falsified - both fascinates and frustrates her and she determines to find him. Who was this Baudelaire of The Liberties this lurker in Irish history whose enigmatic presence helped determine its course?

As the lines between research and real life become blurred, Bridget starts to notice aspects of her life bleeding into Mangans. An obsession becomes a haunting and she realises that the only way to truly reach Mangan is to reckon with her own ghosts.

Finding Mangan resurrects Irelands most enigmatic literary figuring, restoring his rightful place in the national consciousness.

Imaginative and absorbing, at last Mangan has found the perfect biographer. John Banville

A new, shapeshifting approach to biography . . . It reads like a dream. Roy Foster

I adored the writing. Its fizzing energy. Its spinning clarity. Its openhearted rigour.Alan McMonagle

About Bridget Hourican

Bridget Hourican is a journalist and historian whose work has appeared in the Irish Times, Time Out and Image. She is the editor of Straight from the Heart: Irish Love Letters and a contributor to the Dictionary of Irish Biography. She lives in Dublin.

Additional information

GOR013949714
9780717194834
0717194833
Finding Mangan: The many lives and afterlives of James Clarence Mangan by Bridget Hourican
Used - Very Good
Hardback
Gill
2024-08-09
408
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - Finding Mangan