The University of Wisconsin Press

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Irish Studies / Literature & Criticism / Women's Studies

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Wild Colonial Girl Essays on Edna O'Brien Edited by Lisa Colletta and Maureen O'Connor Irish Studies in Literature and Culture Michael Patrick Gillespie, Series Editor "Language is an extraordinary thing. It is more extraordinary than any nuclear weapon." —Edna O'Brien, in a 1995 interview with Salon.com Since the 1960 publication of her first novel, The Country Girls, award-winning Irish writer Edna O'Brien has been both celebrated and maligned. Praised for her lyrical prose and vivid female characters and attacked for her frank treatment of sexuality and alleged sensationalism, O'Brien and her work seem always to spawn controversy, including the past banning in Ireland of several of her works. O'Brien's attention to "women's" concerns such as sex, romance, marriage, and childbirth has often relegated her to critical neglect at best and, at worst, outright contempt. This essay collection promises to be a long overdue critical reevaluation and exciting rediscovery of her oeuvre. Wild Colonial Girl situates O'Brien in Irish contexts that allow for an appraisal of her significant contribution to a specifically Irish women's literary tradition while attesting to the potency of writing against patriarchal conventions. Each chapter's clear and detailed readings of O'Brien's fiction build a convincing case for her literary, political, and cultural importance, providing an invaluable critical guide for an enriched appreciation of O'Brien and her work. "Readers of Edna O'Brien's lyrical fiction can discover or revisit in Wild Colonial Girl the favorites—Kate and Baba, the mother and the Virgin Mary, Sister Imelda, ancient and modern Ireland, Breege and the Irish Revolutionary soldier—all in a search for selfhood amid sexual conflict, ambient guilt, and social paradoxes. Irish author Edna O'Brien has long merited this breakthrough scholarly study." —Grace Eckley, editor of Newstead Lisa Colletta is assistant professor of English at Babson College. She is the author of Dark Humor and Social Satire in the Modern British Novel and the editor of Kathleen and Christopher: Christopher Isherwood's Letters to His Mother. Maureen O'Connor teaches English at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.) Of Related Interest: Joyce's Critics Transitions in Reading and Culture Joseph Brooker "I have not come across a book as useful and as discerning as this on the present state of Joyce criticism."                                  —Robert Baker, University of Wisconsin–Madison

August 2006 LC: 2005022818 PR 248 pp.  6 x 9 Paper $24.95 s ISBN 978-0-299-21634-4 ADD TO CART   Contributors: Wanda Balzano Kristine Byron Lisa Colletta Danine Farquharson Michael Patrick Gillespie Sophia Hillan Rebecca Pelan Maureen O'Connor Bernice Schrank Helen Thompson

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