The Complete Works of J.M. Synge

Edited and with an Introduction by Aidan Arrowsmith, Manchester Metropolitan University.


The literary and dramatic work of J.M. Synge is most famous for the 'riots' provoked by his 1907 play The Playboy of the Western World and, indeed, this was neither the first nor the last time that Synge's dramas incited passionate disagreements. But, one hundred years on, it's clear that his writings are amongst Ireland s most brilliant and significant, as well as controversial. Here, for the first time, a single volume collects all of Synge's published plays, including Playboy, along with his Poetry and Translations, and the prose works that detail his travels in The Aran Islands, In Wicklow, In Kerry and In Connemara.


These are works of lasting and universal value, bringing together the sensibilities of Romanticism and Modernism, and arguing passionately for the freedom of the imagination. At the outset of the twentieth century, they not only gripped audiences with their drama, poetry and humour, they also shaped discussions about the formation of the Irish nation. Now, reading these works together in one volume reveals Synge's value system and shines a penetrating light on a key period in Irish history. A new introduction by Aidan Arrowsmith, of Manchester Metropolitan University, explains Synge's relationship to the intense political turmoil out of which his writing emerged.