Irish literature

Irish literature, composite of folk tales, lyric and narrative poetry, novels, short stories and drama from ancient to present-day Ireland. Irish literature is notable for having been written in both Gaelic and English. During its Golden Age (c. 700–1,000), Gaelic lyric poetry and myths flourished. The Irish continued to write good poetry in Gaelic through the mid-1800's. During the 1800's a group of Irish writers, led by playwrights William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory, created a singularly Irish literature in English, and thereby an Irish literary revival. James Joyce, the author of the revolutionary Ulysses (1922), was a key figure in the development of modern Irish literature. Among other important modern authors are the playwright George Bernard Shaw and the fiction writer Frank O'Connor.