An authentic re-creation of sixteenth-century Ireland provides the backdrop for the saga of real-life Irish chieftain Grace O'Malley, who took part in a lifelong struggle against England's Queen Elizabeth I.

An authentic re-creation of sixteenth-century Ireland provides the backdrop for the saga of real-life Irish chieftain Grace O'Malley, who took part in a lifelong struggle against England's Queen Elizabeth I.

First published in 1892, Grania is the story of a fisherman’s daughter from the Islands of Aran, off the coast of Galway. Grania O’Malley’s life is circumscribed by family duty and her destiny as wife to her feckless fiancé, Murdough Blake. When she realises her wants her only for her money and property, Grania rejects him in favour of heroism, although with tragic consequences. Through complex and skilled characterisation, Lawless evokes a vivid picture of island life, with its unforgiving landscape and grinding poverty. Using a unique poetic style, the author conveys both humour and a sense of Gaelic identity, inextricably linked with this remarkable community. Algernon Swinburne described Grania as “one of the most exquisite and perfect works in the language” and Mrs Humphry Ward praised its “breath of sensitive humanity”. This scholarly edition, the first for twenty-five years, brings Emily Lawless’s extraordinary novel to a new audience. This edition includes: critical introduction by Michael O’Flynn extensive explanatory footnotes selection of contemporary reviews selection of essays, poems and letters by Emily Lawless contextual material on the New Woman; marriage; motherhood; evolution; and literature and the novel

The manuscript materials included in the Cornell Yeats edition of "Diarmuid and Grania" provide a full record of the disputes and revisions that culminated in the final draft of the play, which opened at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin on October 21, 1901.