A civic reconstruction useful for the serious student of either writer, and for the historian, even of the "Troubles". This series of civic snapshots do tell us that environment has some effects on Literature. If you have lived close to a brewery in hot weather, it may alter your appreciation for the "Quick snap of the hops " in the India Pale ale." ( )

1939 Dublin In the Age of William Butler Yeats and James Joyce, by Richard M. Kain (read 18 Aug 1985) I enjoyed this book greatly, particularly that chapter which dwells on the politics of the period. I found that I did not remember it as well as I would have expected. This book says the best contemporary account of Easter Week is The Insurrection in Dublin by James Stephens, which was published in London in 1916. Among other things, this book talks of Tom Kettle, who has a bust at St. Stephen's Green in Dublin, whereon this verse by him appears:
"So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,
And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor,
Know that we fools, now, with the foolish dead,
Died not for flag, nor king, nor emperor.
But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed.
And for the secret scripture of the poor."

And I rather liked the rhyme scheme of this ballad:
"'Twas in Kilmainham prison yard our fifteen martyrs died
And cold and still in Arbour Hill they are lying side by side,
But we will yet pay back the debt for the spirit is still alive
In men who stood through fire and blood with convict 95."
An excellent but too slight a book, about a fascinating time in a fascinating country. ( )