There has been a history of distinguished and enduring literary magazines in this country. The Dublin Magazine, founded in 1923 and edited by Seumas O'Sullivan, had an uninterrupted run, first as a monthly and then as a quarterly, from 1926 to 1958. The Bell, a monthly initially edited by Sean O'Faolain and then by Peadar O'Donnell, was published from 1940 to 1954, while the quarterly Irish Writing, edited by David Marcus and Terence Smith until Sean J. White took over in its last years, ran from 1946 to 1957.
These were real achievements in a period when free expression was not considered an inalienable Irish right and when official Ireland's attitude to its writers was to ban their books with zealous frequency and denounce their authors from religious and secular pulpits throughout the land.
Books Ireland began life in 1976 when these bad old days were effectively over, but its longevity is still an achievement - this compendium of book reviews, book news and book chat is currently celebrating its twenty-first birthday, with 206 issues under its belt.
Initially edited from Dublin by Bernard Share, with Jeremy Addis doing his bit from Kilkenny (where he was employed by Kilkenny Design), for the past decade it has been entirely the responsibility of Jeremy (a recent recipient of a free bus pass, he points out), with assistance from a number of loyal part-timers.
Among these has been Kevin Kiely, who just over a year ago persuaded him to include creative new writing in a magazine that until then had entirely been devoted to reviews and book news. Thus, in the current issue you'll find eight new poems and four stories among the 144 reviews and 294 book listings.
The Arts Council, Jeremy says, has supported the magazine "from the year dot". He is less forthcoming about its circulation, deeming it to be "sufficient". with most of its buyers acquiring it on subscription (in thirty-six countries apart from Ireland), though you'll also find it in Eason's and most of the other main book stores.
If you wish to become a subscriber or to submit poems or stories for consideration, contact Books Ireland, 11 Newgrove Avenue, Dublin 4.
Kate O'Brien was among the writers who fell foul of the official Ireland mentioned above - her novels Mary Lavelle (1936) and The Land of Spices (1941) were both banned, though reading them today you would have no idea why.
This year marks the centenary of Kate O'Brien's birth, and it's good to see she is now getting the recognition she always deserved. If you're unfamiliar with her work, or simply want to know more about it, you might profitably tune into a series of eight Thomas Davis lectures produced by Seamus Hosey that start on RTE Radio One this Monday evening.
The author's nephew, John O'Brien, concentrates on personal reminiscences in this first lecture, while in following weeks Lorna Reynolds, Eibhear Walsh and Eavan Boland will be among those seeking to illuminate aspects of her life and work.
Two anniversaries. The centenary of William Faulkner's birth is next Thursday, so perhaps now is the time for those of us hitherto defeated by his difficult (make that impenetrable) style to try him again and see if we were wrong.
No such problems with Stevie Smith who, if she had lived, would have been ninety-five today. Here she is, unsentimental as always, in a final poem discovered posthumously among her papers:
I feel ill. What can the matter be?
I'd ask God to have pity on me,
But I turn to the one I know, and say:
Come, Death, and carry me away.
Ah me, sweet Death, you are the only god
Who comes as a servant when he is called, you know,
Listen then to the sound I make, it is sharp.
Come Death. Do not be slow.
With autumn upon us, it's been - and will continue to be - a time of book launches. The first of these was in the revamped Buswell's Hotel and celebrated Lorna Siggins's account of Mary Robinson's presidency, published by Mainstream. Dick Spring was to launch it, but his mother died earlier that day, and so Ruari Quinn stood in for him with a speech that managed to be both serious and very droll.
Last Monday evening in Waterstone's, two of our most distinctive women writers read from their new novels - Clare Boylan from Room for a Single Lady and Kate O'Riordan from The Boy in the Moon; on Wednesday in Fred Hanna's, Brian Moore read from his latest and much-praised book, The Magician's Wife; and on Thursday evening Nuala O'Faolain was in Eason's launching James Ryan's second novel, Dismantling Mr Doyle, while at the same time in the Gallery of Photography novelist Timothy O'Grady and photographer Steve Pyke were telling the world about I Could Read the Sky, a novel-with-photographs somewhat in the manner of John Berger and Jean Moir - the former has written a preface to it (see page 8).
And there are other launches imminent. On Monday evening in the Irish Writers' Centre, Parnell Square, an Irish issue of the Literary Review (US-based and no relation of Auberon Waugh's monthly magazine) will be released, while in the same venue on Thursday evening Margaret Dolan's collection of short stories, Wire Me to the Moon, will be published by Poolbeg. Also that evening the ever-contentious Norman Mailer will be in Hodges Figgis reading from his new novel, The Gospel According to the Son, which has Jesus as the narrator of his own life - in other words, Mailer being predictably unpredictable again.