The lonely city in The Visitor by Maeve Brennan

About halfway through Maeve Brennan’s novella The Visitor, the author comments on the two worlds that exist within the landscape of a city. She distinguishes these two worlds by describing them as, the one with walls around it, meaning the private interior world of the home, and the one with people around it, which is the public...

Maeve Brennan: Ireland’s greatest forgotten writer

“Home is a place in the mind. When it is empty it frets. It is fretful with memory, faces and places and times gone by. Beloved images rise up in disobedience and make a mirror for emptiness."   The above quote is from Maeve Brennan's novella The Visitor and was my first introduction to her. I discovered...

Thrones and Roses: The history behind Game of Thrones, part 1

 With season 8 of HBO's Game of Thrones underway I thought I'd take a look at some of the historical events and figures that inspired the series. Although Game of Thrones is set in a distinctly fictional fantasy sphere, many aspects of the world portrayed in the series are reminiscent of medieval Europe. George R.R. Martin, the author of...

A reassessment of ‘Poor Polidori’: a look at the life and times of John William Polidori

“ 'We will each write a ghost story', said Lord Byron, and his proposition was acceded to. There were four of us” (Shelley, Author's Introduction, 7). The above quote is from Mary Shelley's introduction to her 1818 novel Frankenstein and refers to the fateful night in the summer of 1816 where Lord Byron ordered the guests gathered at...