Louis MacNeice (1907-1963) is rightly regarded as one of the foremost Irish poets of this century, but he was also a distinctive, gifted, and popular playwright. This unique selection of eight of MacNeice's best-known plays, most of which were written for BBC Radio, draws on the most authoritative texts to provide a much-needed reminder of the power of his dramatic writing. All the plays are published here in authentic versions for the first time, several considerably changed, and two entirely new plays, never before published.

The volume comprises MacNeice's famous The Dark Tower, published here for the first time in its third and final version; the saga play They Met on Good Friday and the parable The Mad Islands, both of which use explicitly Irish subject-matter; the stage play One for the Grave, which mercilessly satirizes television and commercialism; the epic Christopher Columbus; He Had a Date (in its second version), an experiment in radio biography; Prisoner's Progress, a prize-winning parable about an escape from a prisoner-of-war camp; and MacNeice's last play, Persons from Porlock, which traces the nemesis of an artist and was broadcast just four days before MacNeice's own death. This generous and representative selection makes available again MacNeice's entertaining and innovative Irish blend of fantasy and realism, prose and verse, and offers important new perspectives on MacNeice's poetry.

Louis MacNeice's profile page

Alan Heuser's profile page

Peter McDonald's profile page

Alan Heuser is at McGill University, Montreal. Peter McDonald is at University of Bristol.

'Just as critical debate about Louis MacNeice's wrinting will inevitably be enlivened by this invaluable new resource, so will understanding be increased about the much under-discussed two decades of English literaru history that followed the Second Worl War, since the book amplifies and broadens our knowledge of the cultural context in which MacNeice wrote and conceived his literary projects.' Review of English Studies

'Heuser's and McDonald's edition is competent and assertive, without being overtly ideological.' Essays in Theatre

'immaculately edited ... This selection amply shows that they didn't pass out of fashion into obscurity, but into literature. They are always original and invariably surprising.' Andrew Motion, The Observer