Uncanny Ireland: Otherworldly Tales of the Strange and Sublime

’Suddenly the upper rim of the clear setting sun disappeared behind the hill of Knockdoula, and it was twilight. Each child felt the transition like a shock ... and the rounded summit of Lisnavoura, now closely overhanging them, struck them with a new fear.’

Ireland’s rich literary history has within it a vein of potent fantastic fiction, drawing upon a deep folkloric tradition brimming with tales of the aos si (the people of the fairy mounds), the Otherworld and timeless deities. Writers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries added a new chapter to this tradition, reworking elements of folklore into modern tales of the weird and macabre. Featuring stories by classic authors such as Sheridan Le Fanu and Charlotte Riddell alongside pieces by Lady Gregory, Katharine Tynan, Elizabeth Bowen and many more.

Maria Giakaniki is a researcher and editor based in Athens with an expertise in Gothic fiction and Irish literature. She co-edited the Swan River Press collection Bending to Earth: Strange Stories by Irish Women with Brian J. Showers, and is the manager of the Gothic fiction publishing house Ars Nocturna.