Short Fiction of Flann O'Brien (Irish Literature) Read Free

chapters are missing (chapters two, three, and four). There is also an early, largely handwritten version of Slattery’s Sago Saga housed at the Carbondale archive (box 6, folder 1, “Book Reviews—a Holograph of ‘Sago Saga’”), which is dated “15/12/64.” A stage version of Slattery’s Sago Saga , adapted by Arthur Riordan, was first performed by the Performance Corporation at Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, on the 16th of July 2010, directed by Jo Mangan.
    Brian O’Nolan / Flann O’Brien, “[For] Ireland Home & Beauty” (1940), box 4, folder 10, Brian O’Nolan Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. This typescript is an early draft version of “The Martyr’s Crown” (1950), and is published here for the first time. The twelve-page typescript contains some handwritten emendations by O’Nolan, which we have marked up in our base text. This is not the most readable of formats, for which we apologise, but it does demonstrate how O’Nolan assiduously revised his own work.
    John Shamus O’Donnell, “Naval Control,” Amazing Stories Quarterly [USA] 5.1 (Winter 1932), pp. 141–43. This story, the provenance of which remains unproven, is reprinted here for the first time. Over to you, Dear Reader.
----
    1 For a more detailed discussion of Irish literary censorship, see Keith Hopper, “The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Flann O’Brien and the Censorship Code,” Literature and Ethics: Questions of Responsibility in Literary Studies , ed. Neil Murphy et al. (New York: Cambria Press, 2009), pp. 221–41.

 
    Acknowledgments
    Initially, thanks are offered to John O’Brien and Jeremy M. Davies, of Dalkey Archive Press, for their steadfast support of this venture, and for their ongoing contribution to literature that matters. Thanks too to the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, NTU Singapore, for financial support that lead directly to this volume.
    Several postgraduate students helped with early drafts of the individual stories, including Tansey Tang and Esther Ng; all of their work is greatly appreciated. Zhang Jieqiang worked as a research assistant on the later drafts, and his keen eye and meticulous editorial assistance were invaluable. Donal McCay and Paula Tebay offered useful commentary on some of the stories, and their readerly responses to “Naval Control” were particularly instructive.
    Colleagues far and near have been crucial sounding-boards over the past few years, most notably Dr Daniel Jernigan, Prof Ondej Pilný, Dr Jack Fennell, Dr Robert Lumsden, W. Michelle Wang, Annie Proulx, Aidan Higgins, Timothy O’Grady, Mikel Murfi, Eoghan Nolan, Dr Derek Hand, Dr Peter van de Kamp, Dr Joseph Brooker, Bernard O’Donoghue, Mick Henry, and Dr Jennika Baines, while Paul Fagan and Dr Ruben Borg of the International Flann O’Brien Society have been a great source of support and practical advice. Prof Joan Dean, Dr Carol Taaffe, John Wyse Jackson, Adam Winstanley, Dr Alana Gillespie, Marion Quirici and Adrian Naughton all provided important bibliographic information and materials, while Dr Seosamh Mac Muirí and Deirdre Learmont gave their expert advice on the stories in Irish. We are also very grateful to Eddie O’Kane for his wonderful artwork, and to David O’Kane for his visual expertise.
    A special word of thanks is owed to Justine Sundaram, of the John J. Burns Library, Boston College, who was a constant source of support in very real, practical terms, despite numerous requests above and beyond the norm. Emma Wilcox, the English subject librarian at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences library, NTU, has, as always, been extremely supportive. Thanks, too, to David Chaplin and Astrid Fraser at St Clare’s International College, Oxford, and to Prof Lance Pettitt and the Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary’s Uni versity College, Twickenham.
    Thanks are due to the Estate of Brian O’Nolan, for copyright permissions, and to