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Travel by Novel: IrelandBest Historical Novels for Travelers to Ireland
Jump to: Time-Sweep
Ireland truly enters history in the fifth century with the arrival of St. Patrick, a Briton kidnapped and sold into slavery in Ireland. He escaped and returned to Ireland to teach Christianity with impressive success. Celtic beliefs in gods who occurred in triple form may have eased the way for Christianity. The Irish Church was influential across Europe. Its respect for writing and education helped preserve learning after the fall of Rome when the rest of Europe struggled for survival. Ireland was divided into numerous small kingdoms ruled by chieftains who owed allegiance to kings of larger provinces and, by the ninth century, a single High King who unified the island to defend against Viking invasions. From the time of England's King Henry II, English monarchs coveted Ireland and sent armies to conquer parts of the island. English rule became a reality during Henry VIII's time when the Irish Parliament acknowledged him as king. The policies of English landlords caused widespread suffering and pressure for Irish independence. By the 1840s, impoverished Irish farmers depended on the potato for survival. When crops failed because of a blight, huge numbers of Irish died, possibly close to a million. Many others emigrated to America, Australia or elsewhere. Ireland actually exported wheat during the famine years, and many Irish came to believe the British government's policy amounted to genocide. Fury at the English came to a head in Dublin in 1916 in the violent Easter Rising. Though it failed, the harsh English response shifted public opinion overwhelmingly in favor of independence. During the 1920s this became reality for about three-quarters of the island, now the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland remains part of Great Britain, and even there, political violence is now a thing of the past. A visit to Ireland from England's Queen Elizabeth in May 2011 celebrated today's friendly relations between the two countries.
Time-Sweep Novels
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Edward Rutherfurd, The Rebels of Ireland: The Dublin Saga (2006; titled Ireland: Awakening in the U.K.), about Ireland from the sixteenth century into the twentieth; sequel to The Princes of Ireland. Review at CurledUp.com
Legendary Ireland
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Morgan Llywelyn, Red Branch (also titled On Raven’s Wing), a retelling of the legends about the ancient Irish hero Cuchullain. Review at Publishers Weekly Morgan Llywelyn, Bard: The Odyssey of the Irish (1984), about a bard in Celtic Iberia (now Spain) who leads his people to the future land of Ireland. Review at Rambles.net Juliet Marillier, Daughter of the Forest (1999), historical fantasy about an Irish chieftain's daughter whose six elder brothers are placed under an enchantment by her father's new wife; based on the Grimm's fairy tale "The Six Swans"; #1 in the Sevenwaters series. Review at Rambles.net Jules Watson, The Swan Maiden (2009), a retelling of the ancient Irish legend of Deirdre of the Sorrows, cursed at birth to become a woman of great beauty and bring disaster to the Kingdom of Ulster. Excerpt at the author's website
St. Patrick's Ireland
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Stephen Lawhead, Patrick: Son of Ireland, about the fifth century Briton who converted Ireland to Christianity; incorporates fantasy elements. Review by Peter Kazmaier Cindy Thomson, Brigid of Ireland, about a fifth century Irish woman's conversion to Christianity. Ireland of the Kings
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Morgan Llywelyn, Lion of Ireland, about the tenth-century Irish king Brian Boru. Diana Norman, Daughter of Lir Peter Tremayne, Absolution by Murder (1994), a mystery featuring a scholarly young nun who must find out who murdered an abbess about to speak at a religious council to settle disputes between the Irish church and the Church of Rome; #1 in the Sister Fidelma series. Review
Ireland under the Tudors
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Karen Harper, The Irish Princess (2011), about "the fair Geraldine," Elizabeth Fitzgerald, an Irish princess whose family is the target of brutal repression by Henry VIII, but who eventually becomes a trusted lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth I. Review at Darlene Elizabeth Williams's blog Morgan Llywelyn, The Last Prince of Ireland (1992), about Donal Cam O'Sullivan and the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, in which England established its sovereignty over Ireland and ended the rule of the Irish kings. Diana Norman, The Pirate Queen The 17th and 18th Centuries
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Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French, about an Irish attempt to free itself from English rule with the assistance of French troops in 1798; #1 in a trilogy, followed by The Tenants of Time and The End of the Hunt. Review at Anderson Brown's Literary Blog Walter Macken, Seek the Fair Land Shona MacLean, A Game of Sorrows (2010), a thriller about a Scottish university teacher whose Irish cousin pleads him to come to Ireland to free his family from a bard's curse. Review at The Independent
The Potato Famine
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Brendan Graham, The Whitest Flower Mary Pat Kelly, Galway Bay (2009), about an Irish family who decide to emigrate to America during the potato famine. Review at BookReporter.com Walter Macken, The Silent People Joseph O’Connor, Star of the Sea (2002), about the conflicts among the passengers on a ship sailing from Ireland to New York during the Potato Famine years. Leon Uris, Trinity (1976), a saga of four families beginning in the time of the Irish Potato Famine.
The Early 20th Century
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Joseph O’Connor, Ghost Light (2011), about an actress in London during the 1950s who recalls her youth in Dublin, when she joined a theater ensemble in 1907 at age eighteen and fell in love with a brilliant but distant playwright. Review by Ursula K. Le Guin at The Guardian James Plunkett, Strumpet City (1969), about the "Dublin Lockout," an Irish trade union struggle in 1913. Review at Anderson Brown's Literary Blog
The Irish War of Independence
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Patricia Falvey, The Yellow House (2010), about a woman who works in a mill in northern Ireland and is torn between two men, one working for Irish independence, the other the black-sheep son of the mill owner. Review at the Dallas Morning News Morgan Llywelyn, 1916, A Novel of the Irish Rebellion, about a young man in Dublin during the Irish fight for independence; #1 in the Irish Century series. Review at Rambles Morgan Llywelyn, 1921, The War for Independence, about an Irish newspaper reporter during the Irish Civil War; #2 in the Irish Century series. Walter Macken, The Scorching Wind Jamie O’Neill, At Swim, Two Boys (2001), about two Irish boys during the year before the 1916 Easter Rising.
The 1930s and Later
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Maeve Binchy, Circle of Friends (1990), about two girls who grow up in a small Irish village and then go to college in Dublin, where long-buried family secrets finally begin to emerge; set within the author's lifetime. Frank Delaney, Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show For Younger Readers
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Morgan Llywelyn, Pirate Queen Marita Conlon McKenna, Under the Hawthorne Tree (1990), about three Irish children who must fend for themselves after their father leaves to find work during the Potato Famine and their mother goes to find him when he doesn't return; #1 in the Children of Famine trilogy. Recommended for ages 9-12. Joni Sensel, The Humming of Numbers (2008), about a boy in Ireland gifted with the ability to hear the energies of living things who is prepared to take monastic vows until he meets a girl who also has unusual abilities. Recommended for ages 12 and up. Rosemary Sutcliff, The Hound of Ulster Gerard Whelan, The Guns of Easter |
Steeped in history, green and lovely Ireland is a top destination for the many people around the world descended from Irish emigrants. But it's a fascinating place to visit no matter what your roots are. The history of Ireland begins with Greek and Roman references to "Hibernia," a misty, mysterious land at the edge of the world. Irish legends tell of a Celtic invasion that displaced the earlier inhabitants, small, dark people who became immortalized as the "faerie" or "little folk."
J. S. Dunn, 
(1988), about a woman raised in a Norman convent who goes to Ireland to become Abbess of Kildare and falls afoul of a brutal king's politics. 
(1991), about Grace O'Malley, an Irishwoman who turned pirate during the reign of England's Queen Elizabeth I.
(1959), about an Irish merchant who must fight to defend his town from Cromwell's invading army in 1649; #1 in the Irish Trilogy, followed by 
and 
.
(1998), about an Irishwoman who loses her husband in the famine and is tricked into emigrating to Australia without her children.
(1964), about two brothers involved in the Irish struggle for Home Rule; #3 in the Irish Trilogy, which begins in the 17th century with 
(2010), about an eighteen-year-old Irish boy in 1932 whose mother sends him to fetch back his father, who has run off to join a traveling theater troupe. 
(2006), about Granuaile, a Irishwoman who became a powerful pirate with a fleet of her own ships during the sixteenth century. Recommended for ages 10 and up.
(1963), a retelling of the legend of the ancient Irish hero Cuchullain.
(1996), about a twelve-year-old boy living in the Dublin slums during the 1916 Easter Rising. Recommended for ages 12 and up.