James Clarence Mangan is one of Ireland’s great but forgotten poets, vividly brought to life by Bridget Hourican’s new biography A bust of Irish poet James Clarence Mangan in St Stephen's Green, Dublin. Photo: Amy T Zielinski/Getty Images If anyone had told me I’d scrap my weekend plans and surrender to immersion in the life and work of the “elusive, evasive and spectral” James Clarence Mangan, I wouldn’t have believed them. My willingness to do so is due to the passion and flair decanted by biographer Bridget Hourican into her engrossing (and appropriately idiosyncratic) study of this 19th-century poet.
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