Ardrigh Books

Our Books

Publications

At the heart of Ardrigh Books lies a desire to rescue the hidden histories of the province of Ulster. We wish to allow a new generation access to lost works written in and about the north of Ireland. Therefore, we specialise in the retrieval and republication of forgotten texts, with a particular focus on the historically creative period of the Irish Cultural Revival from the 1890s until the Great War. Our books include poetry, prose, fiction, local history, music, folklore and antiquarian essays that have been long out of print.

New for 2010:

The Light of the West

John Arthur Goodchild
Edited and introduced by Sara Craig Lanier

Goodchild was a Celtic Literary Revival poet and mystic who turned to original Bardic and early Christian sources for this mystical history of early Ireland. It describes how, from the arrival of the earliest inhabitants, Irelands spirituality was centred upon a great feminine deity or High Queen. Her influence is traced until her adoption into Celtic Christianity by way of the cult of Saint Bride. This book has become a classic source for Goddess Spirituality, profoundly influencing the new age movements at Glastonbury.

The Annals of the Irish Harpers

Charlotte Milligan Fox
Edited and introduced by Sara Craig Lanier

A biography of the Irish musician Edward Bunting (1773-1843) compiled by Milligan Fox from his rediscovered personal manuscripts in 1911. It also contains a compelling collection of biographical essays about the itinerant Gaelic harpers who performed at the Belfast Harpers Assembly in Belfast in 1792. Bunting’s transcriptions of their music were later published in three volumes and these became a major source for modern Irish traditional music.

The Ulster Land Wars of 1770

Francis Joseph Bigger
Edited and introduced by Roland Spottiswoode

This historical study continues to be the only detailed treatment of the events and organisations that influenced the development of the United Irish Movement twenty years later.

Selected Essays

Standish James O’Grady
Edited and introduced by Roland Spottiswoode

Standish O’Grady’s complex social philosophy was highly influential upon the movement known as Irish Ireland. He was described as ‘ Father’ of the Irish Cultural Revival by the poet W.B.Yeats and this new publication offers an opportunity to rediscover his unique cultural vision.

The Bog of Stars

Standish James O’Grady
Edited and introduced by Roland Spottiswoode

This is a collection of short stories set in Gaelic Ireland during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. These are vivid and compelling narratives about one of the most dramatic and heroic periods in Irish history.

‘The Story of Shane O’Neill’

The Cult of Shane the Proud in the Irish Literary Revival
Edited by Roland Spottiswoode

As the first of the Irish Chieftains to effectively challenge the sixteenth century conquest of Ireland Shane O’Neill had previously been written into history as the quintessential Gaelic savage. This positive reinterpretation of his life history written in 1894 by an anonymous author under the pen-name of Ollamh, generated the now almost forgotten cult of ‘Shane the Proud.’ It had a deep influence upon the Irish Ireland movement and the Northern Cultural Revival in Ulster.

Irene Iddesleigh

Amanda McKittrick Ros
Edited and introduced by Roland Spottiswoode

This novel set in Victorian Ulster is a tragic tale featuring a headstrong heroine who marries for wealth and position but invokes a dreadful downfall through her desperate and destructive love for another. Written by the ‘Divine Amanda’ it is indisputably an inceptive fountain of effervescent, innovative wordplay by our idiosyncratic, inimitable Lone Lady Laureate of Laharna.

Mrs Ross was a celebrated Larne author whose alliterative and vivid prose was avidly read by, among many others, Aldous Huxley, D.H Lawrence, Robert Lynd and Mark Twain. It was also an influence upon the work of her celebrated contemporary, Mr. James Joyce as may be seen in his Finnegan’s Wake. While I am most unwilling to accuse Mr Joyce of plagiarism…

The Spanish Wine

Frank Mathew
Edited and introduced by Sara Craig Lanier

This is a tragic romance set in the sixteenth century with part of it taking place in Dunluce castle on the Antrim coast. A breathless action story, it is told through the first person voice of a heroine charting her wild rural childhood and eventual marriage to a great lord. Penned by a master of the Irish Cultural Revival historical novel.

By Thrasna River

Shan Fadh Bullock
Edited and introduced by Roland Spottiswoode

This semi-autobiographical novel lovingly presents a picture of the harsh realities of farming life on the shores of Upper Lough Erne in county Fermanagh during the last years of the nineteenth century. Bullock’s literary work was profoundly influential on later Irish writers, including Sam Hanna Bell whose first novel, December Bride, revisits many of Bullock’s classic themes.

Ring of Rushes

Shan Fadh Bullock
Edited and introduced by Roland Spottiswoode

These eleven short stories were published the year after By Thrasna River with the reprise of many familiar characters.

Irish Pastorals

Shan Fadh Bullock
Edited and introduced by Roland Spottiswoode

A collection of short stories presenting aspects of rural life in north Cavan and around the shores of Lough Erne in county Fermanagh at the end of the nineteenth century. Bullock employs the term pastoral with self-conscious irony, presenting his readers with the harsh realities of rural life. However, as individuals not yet fully absorbed into a modernist money economy, Bullock illustrates how material difficulties are compensated by the cultural freedom inherent in lives of independent self-reliance.

After Sixty Years

Shan Fadh Bullock
Edited and introduced by Roland Spottiswoode

In the last years of his life, Shan Bullock looks back on the vanished world of the great Fermanagh demesnes of the late nineteenth century, At the heart of the book is a portrait of his father Thomas Bullock who acted as steward to the Earl of Erne at Crom. He was an old-fashioned man both intelligent and opinionated who valued discipline over pleasure and rural independence above urban wealth.