Author(s): Toibin, Colm,
Binding: Paperback,
Date of Publication: 25/07/2019,
Pagination: 192 pages,
Series: N/A,
Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd,
Published By: Penguin Books Ltd,
Book Classification: Ireland, Biography: literary, Literary essays, Literary studies: general
ISBN13\EAN\SKU: 9780241354421

Description:
An intimate study of three of Ireland's greatest writers from one of its best-loved contemporary voices, Colm Toibin.

In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know Colm Toibin takes three of Ireland's greatest writers - Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce - and examines their earliest influences: their fathers.

With his inimitable wit and sensitivity, Toibin introduces us to Wilde Senior, the philandering doctor whose libel case prefigured that of his son; the elder Yeats, an impoverished artist who never finished a painting; and to John Stanislaus Joyce, the hard-drinking, storytelling father of James, who couldn't feed his own family.

This is an illuminating study of how each of these men cast a long shadow not only over the lives of their famous sons, but over the works for which they are celebrated and cherished.