Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century: A Reader Book

I'll be reading this book in stages for a long, long time: it includes 10 full-length plays, 25 short stories, 46 novel extracts, and 170 poems PLUS speeches, essays, articles, letters and so on. Pierce has arranged the material by decade, each decade with a critical and documentary section and an imaginative writing section. I've used the book as a text for teaching Irish Literature, and it has some bonus items at the end, such as a section where the titles are organized by topics and issues. There's a writing and research section and a chronology. It's a terrific collection of primary materials, and it is surprisingly inexpensive. Tremendous value for money. Irish writers notable and obscure are all here, but one editorial decision disappoints, and that is the choice to include writers of the diaspora, writers of Irish descent, but who have never lived in Ireland, North or Republic.