Benedict Kiely Books In Order

Novels

Honey Seems Bitter (1952)
The Cards of the Gambler (1953)
There Was an Ancient House (1955)
The Captain with the Whiskers (1960)
Dogs Enjoy the Morning (1968)
Proxopera (1977)
Nothing Happens in Carmincross (1985)
Land Without Stars (1990)
In a Harbour Green (1992)
God’s Own Country (1993)
And As I Rode by Granard Moat (1997)
Of Clay Gods and Men (1999)

Collections

A Journey to The Seven Streams (1963)
A Ball of Malt and Madame Butterfly (1973)
A Cow in the House (1978)
The State of Ireland (1980)
A Letter to Peachtree (1987)
Trout in the Turnhole (1995)
The Collected Stories of Benedict Kiely (2001)
The Best of Benedict Kiely (2019)

Anthologies edited

The Penguin Book of Irish Short Stories (2011)

Non fiction

Counties of Contention (1945)
The Poor Scholar (1947)
All the Way to Bantry Bay (1978)
Aerofilms Book of Ireland from the Air (1985)
Ireland from the Air (1985)
Yeats’ Ireland (1989)
Drink to the Bird (1991)
25 Views of Dublin (1994)
The Waves Behind Us (1999)
Raid into Dark Corners and Other Essays (1999)

Novels Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Anthologies edited Book Covers

The Penguin Book of Irish Short Stories
(2011)

Non fiction Book Covers

Benedict Kiely Books Overview

Nothing Happens in Carmincross

At the height of the Troubles, Mervyn returns from America to his native Ulster, only to find the specter of bombs and political murder hanging over his idyllic Carmincross. This is the timely reissue of Benedict Kiely’s novel about a land riven by terrorism. Benedict Kiely was one of the most celebrated Irish writers of the twentieth century. He died in February 2007.

And As I Rode by Granard Moat

Kiely’s anthology of Irish songs, ballads, and poetry composed over three centuries and in thirty two countries is a rich literary trip.

The Collected Stories of Benedict Kiely

Among the best writers this company has published is Ireland’s Benedict Kiely. His first book to be released in this country, The State of Ireland, received a front page New York Times Book Review notice in which Guy Davenport wrote, ‘The first meaning of ‘the state of Ireland’ is that it’s a place where stories are still told, deliciously and by masters of the art, of whom Benedict Kiely is one, perhaps the foremost.’This collection was followed by novels, story collections and a separate printing of what William Kennedy called ‘a small masterpiece,’ Proxopera , Kiely’s moving and memorable anti war fable which, especially in these times, bears reading and re reading. This treasure chest of a book, containing his complete short stories and novellas, spans forty years, and introduces another generation to one of the great prose stylists of our age, a man who possesses ‘a unique voice,’ and whose ‘technique is so good as to be invisible.’ For this edition we have included some sixteen stories never published before in the USA, a new introduction by the author, as well as his afterword to Proxopera .

The Penguin Book of Irish Short Stories

Beginning with an exquisite love story an ancient saga retold by Lady Gregory and continuing with George Moore and the birth of the modern short story at the turn of the century, this highly representative collection includes both classic writers and contemporaries. It features the work of such preeminent literary figures as James Joyce, Sean O’Faolain, Mary Lavin, Frank O’Connor, and Liam O’Flaherty, whose work re established the tradition of the short story; it concludes with more recent exponents of the form, all of them highly acclaimed, including Elizabeth Bowen, William Trevor, and Edna O’Brien.

Counties of Contention

A re issue of a commentary first published in 1945, which shows itself as relevant to the situation in Northern Ireland today, as it was nearly 60 years ago. This book provides an insight into one Ulsterman’s view of how a compromise of understanding could be found to allow the men and women of Northern Ireland to live in peace with each other, and solve forever the thing that generations of Englishmen have known as ”the Irish problem”.

Ireland from the Air

In the aftermath of the English Civil War, the Restoration overturned England’s medieval outlook and a new way of looking at the world allowed the genius of Isaac Newton b. 1642 and his contemporaries to flourish. This book sets Newton’s life and work against this fabulous intellectual rebirth.: among his friends and contemporaries were Samuel Pepys, John Evelyn the eccentric antiquarian, the astronomers Edmund Halley and John Flamsteed, and Christopher Wren. They were all in the forefront of founding the Royal Society and their aims were nothing less than to examine the whole field of scientific knowledge.

Raid into Dark Corners and Other Essays

Essays from one of the most popular literary critics and writers in Ireland for over fifty years. In these selected essays, published to mark his eightieth birthday, Benedict Kiely writes principally about the writers of his native Ireland. Written across half a century a number of them were first published in periodicals in the min 1940’s they affirm the breadth of his reading and interests; novelists of the nineteenth century, like Gerald Griffin, William Carleton, Canon Sheehan and George Moore; prose writers of the twentieth century, such as Kate O Brien, Sean O Faol in and Mary Lavin imaginatively twinned with the American writer Flannery O Connor; the early collections of John Montague and Seamus Heaney; as well as thematic essays on such subjects as literary censorship, dialect and literature. One of Benedict Kiely s cherished gifts as an essayist is to send the reader back to the books themselves, to make us read or re read neglected and even forgotten writers: Shan Bullock, Patrick Boyle and Michael McLaverty come to mind. Kiely s reputation as novelist, short story writer, broadcaster, literary journalist and storyteller is secure. As an essayist, he knows when to let the work about which he is writing speak for itself, and shows a wisdom, insight and humanity that call to mind the essays of the English critic V.S. Pritchett. Yet it should not be forgotten that Ben Kiely was writing these essays in a social and political atmosphere that was far less warm hearted than that in which Pritchett worked.