The book concerns the new World Irish, tracing the developing profile of the Irish in America from the Famine forward. The studies draw their material from roughly a one-hundred-year arc of Irish presence and relevance in American life and they would serve as American as well as Irish-American studies.
WINNER OF THE MICHAEL J. DURKAN PRIZE FOR BOOKS ON IRISH CULTURE!
"New World Irish advances scholarship on Irish-America in several ways: sometimes by unsettling conventional wisdom, sometimes by identifying authors and themes that have been overlooked, and always with perceptive and original readings of a literature that is still in the process of being retrieved and defined. This is a thoughtful and useful contribution to both Irish and American Studies." - James Silas Rogers, Editor, New Hibernia Review
"Underlined by wide reading and deep sympathies, Morgan's New World Irish is a quite splendid work of literary scholarship." - Eamonn Wall, author of Writing the Irish West: Ecologies and Traditions
"Morgan's New World Irish is an absorbing, meticulously researched study of the Irish in America. Starting by complicating widely held generalizations about New EnglandYankee versusIrish Catholicantipathies.Literati such asEmily Dickinson,Margaret Fuller, Harold Frederic,and Sarah Orne Jewett, he notes,were among those who recognized the rejuvenating effect of this immigrant group on entrenchedAnglo-Protestanttradition. Morgansets forth a compelling and original narrative of the Irish adventure in America - their role in shapingtheliterature and culture of their host country - citing film from Ford toHitchcock, fiction from Jewett to Fitzgerald, poetry from Thoreau toEamonn Wall." - Donna Potts, author of Contemporary Irish Poetry and the Pastoral Tradition
"Morgan's scholarship is extensive and profound and his analysis is penetrating. In short, this is an excellent addition to Irish American scholarship. Summing Up: Highly recommended." CHOICE
