Non-fiction Bridget Hourican’s book is immensely readable and relatable. Photo: Malcolm McGettigan I’m not sure school children would recognise the name James Clarence Mangan today. Considered by Yeats and Joyce as Ireland’s first national poet, Mangan’s reputation outside of academia has sadly waned in the popular imagination to such an extent that he has become the ghostly figure of Irish letters he once described himself as in his own poems.
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