Too many Malcolm Browns
Jorn Barger
of Irish Literature: from Thomas Davis to WB Yeats" (1972)
by Malcolm Brown... but it's also a query about who MB was
(and wasn't), and also a request for other recommendations
about Irish history in this period.
Joyce alludes so often and so abstrusely to 19thC Irish
politics that any serious Joycean has to make a serious
effort to get the gist. For myself, I've tried dozens of
works that really didn't address the central issues, but
Brown really does. He traces the personalities and events
in deep and subtle psychological detail, exactly as I've
always wanted.
Of course it's out of print, but Amazon has lots of cheap
used copies. (You can ease your search there by going via
my imminent weblog-link at http://www.robotwisdom.com/ .)
I'm disappointed that no Joyceans have ever raved about it
in my hearing, and I tried to do some digging to find out
what else this talented author has done-- but his name is
hard to distinguish from various other MBs.
My best guess is that he was born in 1910, served in the
English department at the University of Washington, wrote
about George Moore and Samuel Ferguson, but _not_ about
TE Lawrence (different MB).
Amazon and other sources call him "Malcolm Johnston Brown"
but there's clearly another author of this name, who was
probably in Botswana in 1987.