• Ireland’s Literary Renaissance (Dublin: Maunsel MCMXVI; NY: Knopf 1916), 415pp. [copyright by John Lane; ded. to M.E.B.]; Do., [rev. edn.] (Dublin: Maunsel 1923); Do. [rev. edn.] London: Grant Richard 1922); and Do. [facs. rep.] (Dublin: Allen Figgis 1968) [see details & extracts].
• Appreciations and Depreciations [Irish Literary Series] (Dublin: Talbot Press 1917), 197pp. [see details]
• The Contemporary Drama of Ireland (Boston: Little Brown 1917), 225pp. [available online], and Do. (Dublin: Talbot Press; London: Fisher & Unwin 1918), [8] 228pp.; Bibl. pp.201-11 [see contents].
  [as “Gnathaí gan Iarraidh” ] The Secret Egoism of Sinn Féin (Dublin & London 1918).
• Portraits, Real and Imaginary (London: Jonathan Cape; NY: George H. Doran 1924).
• Studies from Ten Literatures (NY: Scribner’s 1925)
• Literary Blasphemies (NY: Harper’s 1927).

• The Glittering Fake and The Worked-Out Ward (Dublin: Talbot Press 1918) - both farces.

• H. L. Mencken (NY: R. M. McBride 1925), 89pp., port.
• Guy de Maupassant: A Biographical Study (NY: A. A. Knopf 1926), ill. [pls.], ix, 258pp., and Do. [another edn.] (NY Knopf: Boston: Little, Brown 1928).

• Intro., Standish O’Grady, Selected Essays and Passages (Dublin: Talbot Press 1918).
• ed. Secret Springs of Dublin Song, preface by Susan L. Mitchell (Dublin: Talbot Press; London: T. Fisher Unwin 1918), xii, 51pp. [see note].
• ed.,The Collected Novels and Stories of Guy de Maupassant, newly translated under the editorship of Ernest Boyd (NY: A. A. Knopf 1922, &c.).

• The Diaboliques, trans. from the French with an introduction by Ernest Boyd and an essay by Sir Edmund Gosse (1926).
• trans., Opium: The Diary of an Addict, by Jean Cocteau (London: G. Allen & Unwin 1933), 188pp.

• Intro. to The Newer Spirit: A Sociological Criticism of Literature by V. F. Calverton (NY: Boni & Liveright 1925), xvi, 272pp.
• Criticism in America, Its Function and Status (NY: Harcourt, Brace & Co. [1924]) [essays by I. Babbitt, Van Wyck Brooks, W.C. Brownell, E. Boyd, T.S. Eliot, H.l. Mencken, S.P. Sherman, J.E. Spingarn and G.E. Woodbury].
• Intro. to Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson (q.d.)

Also The Virtues of Vices (1930) [chk].

• ‘The Expressionism of James Joyce’, in New York Tribune (28 May 1922), p.29, and Do. [enl.] in Ireland’s Literary Renaissance [rev. edn.] 1923, pp.402-12.
• ‘Joyce and the New Irish Writers’, in Current History, XXXIX (1934), pp.699-704.

[Both the foregoing rep. in Robert Deming, ed., James Joyce: The Critical Heritage, London; Routledge & Kegan Paul 1970, pp.301-05, 622-23; see Joyce, Commentary, infra.]

[...] She is almost unique in that she is the only writer of any importance whose Catholicism has found literary expression. Reference has previously been made to the famous discussion of Oisin and St. Patrick, the clash of Paganism and Christianity, and to the fact that the Irish poets have almost unanimously declared themselves on the side of the former. It is certainly remarkable how completely the better Catholic writers have effaced their religion from their work. That is not to say they have deliberately suppressed their beliefs, or that the others have openly declared their hostility to the Catholic Church. The fact is simply that one class has been frankly pagan, and, as a rule, mystic, while the other has in no way been inspired or influenced by the teaching to which it assents. It is significant, for example, that so precious an anthology of Catholic folk-poetry as The Religious Songs of [108] Connacht should have been compiled by a Protestant. One would naturally expect that a task of this kind would have appealed to one of the Catholic poets, whose identity of belief and sympathy would specially qualify him to act as an interpreter. But apart from the most minor poets, Katharine Tynan alone reflects that attitude of Catholic Ireland in her verse. Outside of Ireland, Catholicism has been an aesthetic influence. Continental critics have come to regard the Catholic Church as a fosterer of the arts, and many ingenious conclusions have been drawn from the contrast between the artistic imaginativeness of the Latin and Catholic races, and the joyless materialism and ugliness of the Teutonic and Protestant countries. France, especially, has afforded interesting instances of the intimate artistic relations between the Catholic Church and literature. The French Protestant has invariably a certain heaviness, a lack of suppleness and vivacity which distinguish his writing from that of the majority who are untouched by the Lutheran heresy.
[...]

It is not until the mysticism of the book is examined from an intellectual point of view that one fully realises how fundamentally literary it is. Not for nothing are form and content so necessary to one another. What was stated of The Wind Among the Reeds is true of The Secret Rose, their mysticism [174] is decorative, or at best symbolic, and must not be interrogated too closely for a revelation of doctrinal certainty. Yeats has heard the mystic messages of Blake and Boehme, but he does not appear to have correlated the various teachings of his masters into any coherent body of belief. While he himself may find a personal satisfaction in a certain wavering and nebulous theosophy, his own utterances are hardly sufficiently substantial to help the uninitiated. The transcendental common-sense of the true mystic cannot but be shocked at Red Hanrahan’s vision in which the lovers had “heart-shaped mirrors instead of hearts, and they were looking and ever looking on their own faces in one another’s mirrors.” This is obviously no mystic’s vision, but simply the conceit of a poet, a symbol not without literary charm.

[...]

The mysticism of A.E. is entirely different from the symbolism which has given Yeats the reputation of being a mystic. That which is purely decorative in the poetry of the latter is, in A.E., the expression of fundamental truths. The author of Homeward chose to formulate his belief in verse, but, as the circumstances of his entry into literature show, he did so on behalf of a definite spiritual propaganda. Consequently, no desire for literary effect, no use of poetic licence, could sway him from his purpose, which was to illustrate from personal experience the mystic faith that was in him. Unlike Yeats, he did not seize merely upon the artistic opportunities of mysticism, though he does record his visions with the eyes and memory of an artist. The externals which attracted the instinct for beauty in Yeats were not lost upon A.E., but he was above all concerned for the inner meaning of the phenomena, whose plastic value alone captured the imagination [223] of the former poet. We have already seen how Yeats allowed his aesthetic sense to outrage the transcendental common-sense of the true visionary. A, E. is not guilty of this, for the reality of his spiritual adventures imposes a restraint upon his artistic imagination, the latter being satisfied only in so far as is congruous with the former. This scrupulous obedience to the desire for veracity has, indeed, exposed the author to the reproach of repetition and monotony. If there be a certain resemblance between many of his pictures, we should rather admire the constancy of his vision than demand the introduction of effective novelties of phrase and image, probably as false as they are acceptable to a certain class of literary exquisite.
 ‘I know I am a spirit, and that I went forth in old time from the Self-ancestral to labours yet unaccomplished; but, filled ever and again with homesickness, I made these homeward songs by the way.” These words, with which A.E. introduced his first book of verse, should serve as a superscription to the Collected Poems, so completely do they summarise the whole message and tendency of his poetry. All his life he has sung of this conviction of man’s identity with the Divine Power, the Ancestral Self of Eastern philosophy, from whom we are but temporarily divided. The occasion of his poems are those moments of rapture when the seer glimpses some vision reminding him of his immortal destiny, his absorption into Universal Being. The hours of twilight and dawn are those which most usually find the poet rapt in “divine vision,” and to this circumstance must be attributed numerous landscapes whose beauty is undiminished by their being so frequently seen in the same light. A.E. never has recourse to mechanical repetition.  [...; 224]

Peasant melodrama is, therefore, as natural an offshoot of the Revival as the “folk history plays” of Lady Gregory. It becomes the occasion of censure only when we find that it is usurping the place of the dramatic literature which the Irish Theatre set out to foster. The plays of T. C. Murray, S. L. Robinson, and others, are the too frequent rivals of the still more frequently performed comedies of Lady Gregory and William Boyle, in the Abbey Theatre’s bid for popularity. The last two writers are undoubtedly the authentic forerunners of these later playwrights. In so far as they have consistently appealed to the same taste. The grotesque idiots of the comic dramatists are the humorous counterparts of the violent brutes who curse and fight their way through the scenes of rural melodrama. The fact that such plays are profitable cannot justify their being produced almost to the exclusion of others, unless the defeat of the purpose of the National Theatre be admitted. The standard of achievement is lowered, so that writers of merit either become corrupted, or resign themselves to practical oblivion. Apart from the names which have never appeared on the programme of the Theatre since 1907, there are several dramatists of obvious talent who are neglected, and deprived either of the opportunity or the ambition to supplement their first efforts. Consequently, it happens from time to time that playwrights who are unable to meet the requirements of the commercial theatre address themselves elsewhere. Thus we find that the Abbey Theatre is failing to fulfil its original [354] destiny, namely, to encourage the production of plays not susceptible of commercial exploitation.

The peculiar circumstances of Irish life - the predominance of a rural civilisation, the absence of [388] highly developed urban communities retaining their racial characteristics to the same degree as the peasantry - tend to retard the evolution of the Irish novel. William Carleton, our greatest novelist, showed, in the first half of the nineteenth century, that peasant life was no less susceptible of being adapted to the purposes of his art than any other phase of human existence. Carleton, however, had the advantage of living in a period when the struggle for life in Ireland reached its maximum intensity, amongst precisely those communities which dwelt outside the range of urban influences. Famine, disease and the political and social disturbances of his century all combined to heighten the dramatic quality of the material at the novelist’s disposal. But even Carleton could not escape the fate which imposes the short story as the essential form of Irish fiction. His Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (1830-33) is remembered by many who have forgotten The Black Prophet (1847), his finest novel.

Whether it be cause or effect, against the absence of the novel in contemporary Anglo-Irish fiction must be set a large collection of folk-tales and legends. The retelling of the old stories of bardic literature has absorbed the energies of many Irish prose writers in recent years, apart from those who have been engaged in the work of translating and editing the classic texts of Gaelic literature. (p.394.)

The literature of the Celtic Renaissance has been predominantly the creation of poets and dramatists, and in retrospect it presents a somewhat unequal appearance, owing to the absence of prose writers. The novel has fared badly, but criticism has fared worse, being unrepresented, except for the intermittent essays of John Eglinton, and that interesting, if isolated, work of collaboration, Literary Ideals in Ireland, of which some account has been given. The aesthetic reveries of W. B. Yeats, like the scattered articles of A.E. and others, do not bear witness to any deliberate critical effort on their part. Impartial criticism is a more than usually delicate task where a small country like Ireland is concerned. When the intellectual centre is confined within a restricted area, personal relations are unavoidable, and the critic finds discretion imperative, if he is to continue to dwell peaceably in the midst of his friends. Nevertheless, the Irish reviews have not shrunk from publishing the most candid criticism, and if little of this material has been collected, it is the fault of the critics. An interesting and hopeful innovation was the publication of Thomas MacDonagh’s Literature in Ireland. This thoughtful volume of “studies in Irish and Anglo-Irish” was published shortly after [398] the author’s execution, and promised to be an introduction to further works of a similar character. MacDonagh was well equipped for the task he had set himself, and this book is an important contribution to the study of Anglo-Irish poetry.
 Nevertheless, the Irish reviews have not shrunk from publishing the most candid criticism, and if little of this material has been collected, it is the fault of the critics. An interesting and hopeful innovation was the publication of Thomas MacDonagh’s Literature in Ireland. This thoughtful volume of “studies in Irish and Anglo-Irish” was published shortly after [398] the author’s execution, and promised to be an introduction to further works of a similar character. MacDonagh was well equipped for the task he had set himself, and this book is an important contribution to the study of Anglo-Irish poetry.
 he effect upon the literature of the smaller countries of this absence of critical judgment, publicly expressed, has been that honest criticism prefers to be silent where it cannot praise. Consequently, there is lack of intellectual discipline which allows the good and the mediocre to struggle on equal terms for recognition. In Ireland we have become accustomed to hearing Irish writers either enthusiastically advertised by the English press, or denounced as charlatans, usurping the fame reserved for the genuine heirs of England’s literary glory. The phenomenon rarely calls for more than casual attention, so fortuitous does it seem. Yet, so far as it has any reasonable basis, it may be traced to our habit of allowing every writer who so desires to submit his work to outside criticism on the same terms as our most distinguished literary representatives. We cannot expect others to show more discrimination than ourselves, and when the storm of facile applause has broken over the head of the confiding poet or dramatist, we need not be surprised if some spirit more enquiring than the others leads an abusive reaction. So long as we continue to have our criticism written for us by journalists in England these disconcerting alternations of idolatry and contempt will follow Irish literature abroad.
 However flattering the cult of Celticism may seem to us, it is unwise to attach any significance to it. Anglo-Irish literature, as a whole, has not grown up to meet the desires of the devotees of this cult, but to meet the need of Ireland for self-expression. [399] Should it incidentally produce a writer of such proportions as to entitle him to a place in comparative literary history, let us, by all means, encourage him to challenge the attention of the outside world.  The main purpose, however, of the Literary Revival has not been to contribute to English literature, but to create a national literature for Ireland, in the language which has been imposed upon her - a circumstance which effectively disposes of the theory that) Ireland is merely an intellectual province of England. The provincial Irishman is he who prefers to identify himself with the literary movement of another country but his own, and those writers who have addressed themselves to the English, rather than to the Irish, public are obviously in that category. They are always expatriates to their adopted countrymen.
 The only question, therefore, which must be answered by such a survey as the present is: has the Literary Renaissance accomplished its purpose? Has it given us a body of work which may fairly be described as the nucleus of a national literature? In spite of various weaknesses, It seems as if Anglo-Irish literature had proved its title to be considered as an independent entity. It has not altogether escaped the literary traditions of the language in which it is written, but it has shown a more marked degree of originality, in respect of form and content, than Belgian or any other literature similarly dominated by a powerful neighbour. Possessing the advantage, denied to Switzerland and Belgium, of a great native literature, with all the traditions thereby implied, Ireland has been able to mould her second language according to the literary genius of the race.
It does not matter in the least whether the poetry of the Revival deserves, or does not deserve, the honours which enthusiasts have claimed for It. We [400] must, first of all, determine whether the literature of the Revival is really national, and then attempt to estimate the relative importance of those who created it. If this history has helped in any way to attain that object, It will have corresponded to the intention with which it was conceived. Comparative criticism will in due course decide that question which obsesses certain minds, namely: is W. B. Yeats a greater poet than Shelley? France did not assign his status to her supreme poetic genius, Racine, by reference to Dante and Shakespeare. National (or local) values invariably take precedence of international, however disappointing that fact may seem to lovers of the absolute. [End.]