Edna Longley (born 1940) is an Irish literary critic and cultural commentator specialising in modern Irish and British poetry.

Early life and education

Born in

Cork Cork or CORK may refer to: Materials * Cork (material), an impermeable buoyant plant product ** Cork (plug), a cylindrical or conical object used to seal a container ***Wine cork Places Ireland * Cork (city) ** Metropolitan Cork, also known as G ...

in 1940, the daughter of mathematics professor T.S. Broderick and a Scottish Presbyterian mother, she was baptised a Catholic but brought up in "the Anglican compromise" (Church of Ireland). She went up to

Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

in 1958 where her contemporaries included the poets

Michael Longley Michael Longley, (born 27 July 1939, Belfast, Northern Ireland), is an Anglo-Irish poet. Life and career One of twin boys, Michael Longley was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to English parents, Longley was educated at the Royal Belfast A ...

Derek Mahon Derek Mahon (23 November 1941 – 1 October 2020) was an Irish poet. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland but lived in a number of cities around the world. At his death it was noted that his, "influence in the Irish poetry community, lit ...

and

Eavan Boland Eavan Aisling Boland (24 September 1944 – 27 April 2020) was an Irish poet, author, and professor. She was a professor at Stanford University, where she had taught from 1996. Her work deals with the Irish national identity, and the role of w ...

. After her marriage to Michael Longley, she moved with him to Belfast and obtained her first teaching post at Queen's University Belfast. From 1989 to 1994 she was Academic Director of the John Hewitt Summer School. Trinity College Dublin gave her an honorary doctorate in 2003. Her daughter is the artist Sarah Longley. In Jan 2012 Queen's recognised her importance to the academic life of the university with the unveiling of a portrait of Longley in the Great Hall. Professor Terence Brown, who unveiled the portrait, described her as "one of the foremost public intellectuals that Ireland has produced."

Academic and critic

Now Professor Emerita at Queen's University Belfast, as a lecturer and later Professor of English at Queen's, Longley was influential in both literary and political culture of Northern Ireland both during and since the years of

The Troubles The Troubles ( ga, Na Trioblóidí) were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is sometimes described as an " ...

. While she was at the Queen's University, the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry was founded. She gained particular renown in Ireland for her public criticism of "depredatory ideologies" both in their political and the literary aspects. In her Lip pamphlet ''From Cathleen to Anorexia'' (1990) she was scathingly critical of the identification of feminism with Irish nationalism. At the Yeats Summer School in 1993 she attacked ''The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing'' for 'a propensity to censorship and an obsession with colonialism', developing those arguments in her 1994 collection of essays ''The Living Stream: Literature and Revisionism in Ireland'', an extended critique of nationalism in Irish writing. She has also been one of the foremost scholars in Edward Thomas studies, publishing two editions of his poetry (1973 and 2008) and one of his prose (1981), and is one of the editors of the planned Oxford University Press series ''Edward Thomas: The Essential Prose''. Writing in Dublin's ''Sunday Business Post'',

Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.

called her 2008 ''Annotated Collected Poems'' the "definitive new edition of Edward Thomas...a crowning achievement by Thomas's best advocate". Longley famously stated that Irish history ought to be treated by "raising a monument to Amnesia, and forgetting where we put it".

Honors and awards

* British Academy Fellow (2006) * American Academy of Arts and Sciences - International Honorary Member (2019)

Works

Literary criticism

*''Poetry in the Wars'' ( Bloodaxe Books, 1986) *''Louis MacNeice: A Study'' (

Faber & Faber Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel ...

, 1988) *''From Cathleen to Anorexia: The Breakdown of Ireland'', Lip pamphlet (Attic Press, Dublin, 1990) *''The Living Stream: Literature and Revisionism in Ireland'' ( Bloodaxe Books, 1994) *''Gender and the Irish Identity'' ( Bloodaxe Books, 1996) *''Poetry and Posterity'' ( Bloodaxe Books, 2000) *''Multiculturalism: The View from the Two Irelands'' (with

Declan Kiberd Declan Kiberd (born 24 May 1951) is an Irish writer and scholar with an interest in modern Irish literature, both in the English and Irish languages, which he often approaches through the lens of postcolonial theory. He is also interested in th ...

) ( Cork University Press, 2001) *‘The Great War, History and the English Lyric', in Vincent Sherry (editor), ''The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the First World War'' (

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pre ...

, 2005)

As editor

* Edward Thomas: ''Poems and Last Poems'' ( Macmillan, 1973) *''The Selected James Simmons'' (Blackstaff Press, 1978) *''The Selected Paul Durcan'' (Blackstaff Press, 1982) *''A Language Not to Be Betrayed: Selected Prose of Edward Thomas'' ( Carcanet Press, 1981). *''Across a Roaring Hill: The Protestant Imagination in Modern Ireland'', with Gerald Dawe (Blackstaff Press, 1985) *

Marin Sorescu Marin Sorescu (; 29 February 1936 – 8 December 1996) was a Romanian poet, playwright, and novelist. His works were translated into more than 20 countries, and the total number of his books that were published abroad rises up to 60 books. He ha ...

: ''The Biggest Egg in the World'' ( Bloodaxe Books, 1987) * Dorothy Hewett: Alice in Wormland: Selected Poems ( Bloodaxe Books, 1990) *''Culture in Ireland: Division or Diversity?: proceedings of the Cultures of Ireland Group Conference, 27–28 September 1991'' (Institute of Irish Studies, 1991) *''Yeats Annual No.12: That Accusing Eye - Yeats and His Irish Readers'' (co-editor) ( Palgrave, 1996) *''The Bloodaxe Book of 20th Century Poetry from Britain and Ireland'' ( Bloodaxe Books, 2000) *''Ireland (Ulster) Scotland: Concepts, Contexts, Comparisons'' (co-editor) (Cló Ollscoil na Banríona, Belfast, 2003) * Edward Thomas: ''The Annotated Collected Poems'' ( Bloodaxe Books, 2008)

References

External links

The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen's University Belfast
{{DEFAULTSORT:Longley, Edna 1940 births Living people Alumni of Trinity College Dublin Irish literary critics Irish women critics Women literary critics Academics of Queen's University Belfast People from County Cork