This collection of essays looks at a variety of responses by writers to the problems of their motherland. Includes essays on Swift, Burke, Ferguson, Yeats, Lady Gregory, Joyce, Shaw, O'Casey, Parker and Egan, as well as Northern Irish poets and playwrights. Essayists include Vivian Mercier, A. Norman Jeffares, Lorna Reynolds, Maurice Harmon, John S. Kelly, Declan Kiberd, Christopher Murray, Brian Arkins, and Augustine Martin.