Irish Books that Changed the World
I've been writing a feature article for the Belfast Telegraph: Twelve Irish Books that Changed the World. Obviously, the idea comes from Melvin Bragg's which accompanies a TV series he'll be presenting this month. I interviewed him recently for Radio Ulster's The Book Programme. Here's Bragg's dozen:
Charles Darwin - The Origin of Species (1859)
The First Rule Book of the Football Association (1863)
William Shakespeare - First Folio (1623)
Newton - Principia Mathematica (1687)
Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations (1776)
William Wilberforce - Speech to the House of Commons (May 12 1789)
The King James Bible (1611)
Patent Specification for Arkwright's Spinning Machine (1769)
Mary Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
Michael Faraday - Experimental Research in Electricity (1855)
Marie Stopes - Married Love (1918)
Magna Carta (1215)
As you can see, Bragg has limited himself to British books that were agents of change in the world, which explains the absence of, say, Plato and Goethe. You'll also notice that he allows the term 'book' to cover just about any kind of document (a speech, a patent, a rule book, a sex manual, a play, etc.)
The interview set me thinking: could I come up with my own list of twelve Irish books that changed the world? And could I even find some Northern Irish books into the bargain? So, between making a couple of TV series and a few radio programmes of my own, I've been quietly forming my own list. To coincide with our launch of the new series of The Book Programme, I'll go into print with my very own Celtic Canon in the next few days. I've been asking everyone i know, and even strangers in lifts, which books they'd include.
Any ideas?
Comments
James Joyce has to be on any list of great Irish books.
Bragg hasn't limited himself, so in that spirit should we also be looking at Beckett? Is Godot just too obvious?
Why Beckett? He changed theatre ... but the world? Joyce at least changed the way people write novels forever.
Using the same logic as Melvin Bragg you could add "the 1953 edition of Gregory and Hadley's Textbook of Physics" ref - Reverend Professor Nicholas Callan - the inventor of the induction coil.But,who in Ireland has read that?
I dont think you could really put Godot on a list of books that changed the world. It didnt even really change Ireland. Who in Ireland has seen a production or read the play? Who even knows the names of the two central characters. Nah. Strike Godot.
"Ulysses" is memorable for many things, including the ironic "Sufficient unto the day is the newspaper thereof". James Joyce's wife Nora was in a sense the Muse of all his books, and Molly Bloom owes a great deal to her. But she herself did not read his books, claiming that since they were about her she did not need to. On another occasion, she said that she would read them after he was gone: considering how well (meaning how poorly) they had sold she knew, she said, that they must be good. Yeats devotees, a dedicated lot, will undoubtedly think his exclusion unwarranted.