Bernard Shaw’s Irish Outlook

"David Clare's radical analysis, delivered in subtle prose, constitutes a challenge to Shavians and to Hibernophiles to rethink some of their most basic assumptions. A bracing and enjoyable read." — Declan Kiberd, Professor, University of Notre Dame, USA

"Clare wonderfully illuminates the degree to which Shaw's Irish identity remained the great constant in his protean career." — Fintan O'Toole, The Irish Times

"We know that Ireland is a presence in some of Shaw's plays - John Bull's Other Island, most famously. David Clare's fascinating and important study gives us new ways to think about such works but also sheds new light on many of Shaw's most famous dramas, including Pygmalion and Saint Joan. As readable as it is insightful, this book will be of wide interest to scholars of Shaw, Irish literature, and theatre studies." — Patrick Lonergan, Professor, National University of Ireland, Galway

Using close readings of Shaw's plays and letters, as well as archival research, David Clare illustrates that Shaw regularly placed Irish, Irish Diasporic, and surrogate Irish characters into his plays in order to comment on Anglo-Irish relations and to explore the nature of Irishness.

David Clare is an Irish Research Council-funded postdoctoral research fellow at the Moore Institute at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His work has been published in the Irish Studies Review, the New Hibernia Review, the Irish University Review, Studies: An Irish Quarterly, and Emerging Perspectives. He holds an MA and a PhD in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama from University College Dublin, Ireland.