You are cordially invited to the book launches for Bernard Shaw’s Irish Outlook, by David Clare.

Although Bernard Shaw is often regarded as a writer of English society plays, his formative years in Ireland deeply influenced his work for the stage. His use of Irish, Irish Diasporic, Surrogate Irish, and Stage English characters reveals the degree to which he maintained a strongly Irish perspective throughout his life. Shaw’s Irish characters betray his Irish reverse snobbery; he uses them to suggest that it is better to come from a marginalized background than a privileged one. Some of his English and American characters (including Henry Higgins) derive their strengths – and some of their weaknesses – from their Irish cultural backgrounds, and Shaw occasionally endows non-Irish characters (such as Saint Joan) with Irish qualities and then uses them as crypto-Irish foils in their dealings with English characters. Finally, Shaw uses Stage English characters in his three Irish plays to critique the English for what he sees as their national flaws.

Dr. David Clare is an IRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow based in the Moore Institute at NUI Galway. His work has been published in the Irish Studies Review, the New Hibernia Review, the Irish University Review, Studies: An Irish Quarterly, and Emerging Perspectives.

Bernard Shaw’s Irish Outlook is an important, original, well-written, critically incisive, and long overdue study of Bernard Shaw’s Irishness … It is the first single-authored volume exclusively focused on the subject of Shaw and Irishness. It will be joined by others in time, but it is unlikely to be bettered. – Prof. Anthony Roche, University College Dublin

Clare’s radical analysis – delivered in subtle prose – constitutes a challenge to Shavians and to Hibernophiles to rethink some of their most basic assumptions. A bracing and enjoyable read. – Prof. Declan Kiberd, University of Notre Dame

Clare wonderfully illuminates the degree to which Shaw’s Irish identity remained the great constant in his protean career. – Fintan O’Toole, The Irish Times

We know that Ireland is a presence in some of Shaw’s plays – John Bull’s Other Island, most famously. Clare’s fascinating and important study gives us new ways to think about such works but also sheds new light on many of Shaw’s most famous dramas, including Pygmalion and Saint Joan. As readable as it is insightful, this book will be of wide interest to scholars of Shaw, Irish literature, and theatre studies. – Prof. Patrick Lonergan, NUI Galway

DUBLIN LAUNCH – Wed., 16 December 2015 from 6-8pm in the Conference Room at the Dublin City Archives, Pearse Street Library, Dublin 2. At this event, the book will be launched by Prof. Declan Kiberd of the University of Notre Dame and by Prof. Patrick Lonergan of NUI Galway.