Book Description

Excerpt from The Lighter Side of Irish Life Thus a mythical Irishman has come into be ing, a sentimentalist at heart, a creature of ir responsible gaiety, of singular and irresistible charm of manner, of spontaneous brilliance, a light lover of every pretty woman, or in cases where he happens himself to be a woman, a careless winner of the hearts of men. It is small wonder that the Irish are popular with writers of fiction. We supply for the novelist a long felt want, and are fitted to play In his stories just those parts which throw into the strongest relief the stable worthiness of the ideal, and, I fear, equally mythical, Englishman. The reader of contemporary fiction can hardly fail to be struck with the fact that a dash Of Irish blood in her veins is now considered necessary as an explanation of the charm of a heroine, that true gallantry in a hero can only be rendered credible by providing him with at least a great grandmother who belonged to an old Irish fam ily. This myth about the Irish character is of comparatively recent growth. The older novel ists knew nothing of it. They either despised us too much to put us into their books at all, or. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.