The Appleman and The Poet by Hubert Butler

The Appleman and The Poet by Hubert Butler

The Appleman and the Poet places a capstone upon a project begun with Escape from the Anthill in 1985. Butlers essays, written over six decades, establish him as one of Irelands great twentieth- century prose writers and thinkers.

Whether he is writing about wartime atrocities or local history, the slaughter of the Jews or Celtic hagiography, he speaks with authenticity … one of the great essayists in the English language, the peer of Hazlitt, Robert Louis Stevenson and George Orwell’ John Banville ‘A unique distillation of the Anglo-Irish spirit, as idiosyncratic, mellow and stimulating as poteen matured in a brandy-cask … His book inspires hope for the twenty-first century.’ Dervla Murphy , The Irish Times ‘Like Milosz from Poland or Holub from Czechoslovakia, Butler is a true cosmopolitan, and his writing has something of their unruffled astringency and meditative humour.’ John Bayley, The Times Literary Supplement ‘[A] most surprising and exhilarating hamper of essays, full of wit, wisdom, and luminous insights.’ Robert Kee , Independent on Sunday ‘Butler is an eloquently moral, enlightened and intellectually militant Irishman who uses incisive words as his weapons … in a modest yet considerable way his name might now begin to take its place in the tradition of such ‘solitary’ Irish libertarians as Swift and Burke, Davitt and O’Casey, Sheehy-Skeffington, O’Faolain, O’Donnell, MacBride and Noel Browne.’ David Krause, Irish Literary Supplement ‘To follow Hubert Butler is to enjoy the hair-raising frisson of history passing by.’ Eoghan Harris, Image ‘Opening the contents page, one has an impression of disparateness; closing the book, of having discovered an oeuvre … Butler’s unadorned style expresses atmosphere with extraordinary clarity.’ Roy Foster

Hubert Butler was born in Kilkenny on 23 October 1900 and educated in England at Charterhouse and St John's College, Oxford. After working with the Irish County Libraries in the mid-1920s, he travelled extensively, teaching English at Alexandria and Leningrad. In 1934 he went to Yugoslavia on a three-year scholarship from the London School of Slavonic Studies. His translations published at this time were from the Russian: 'Leonid Leonov's The Thief' (1931) and Chekhov's 'The Cherry Orchard' (1934), staged by his brother-in-law Tyrone Guthrie at London's Old Vic in 1933. When his father died in 1941 he came home to Maidenhall in Co. Kilkenny, reviving the Kilkenny Archaeological Society in 1944 after a lapse of fifty years. In 1954 he organized the Kilkenny Debates, staged annually until 1962. In 1967, with Lord Dunboyne, he founded the Butler Society, editing its Journal until his death on 5 January 1991. As a market gardener, essayist and historian, his published works include 'Ten Thousand Saints: A Study in Irish & European Origins' (self-published in 1972; reissued by Lilliput, with an introduction from Alan Harrison, in 2011). A succession of prize- winning volumes then appeared: 'Escape from the Anthill' (1985), 'The Children of Drancy' (1988), 'Grandmother and Wolfe Tone' (1990) and 'In the Land of Nod' (1996) - winning him a growing international reputation, attested to by publications abroad. These include a single volume, selected by Roy Foster, 'The Sub-Prefect Should Have Held His Tongue' (Allen Lane and Penguin Books, London, 1990); a French translation, 'L'Envahisseur est venu en pantoufles', prefaced by Joseph Brodsky (Anatolia, Paris, 1995); a further selection by Elisabeth Sifton, 'Independent Spirit' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1996); a two-volume selection, each introduced by John Banville: 'The Eggman and the Fairies: Irish Essays' and 'The Invader Wore Slippers: European Essays' (Notting Hill Editions, London, 2012).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781843512677
ISBN 10	184351267X
Title	The Appleman and The Poet
Author	Hubert Butler
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	The Lilliput Press Ltd
Year published	2012-10-01
Number of pages	254
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.