Strangers at Lisconnel

MP3 Audio CD. Subtitled A Second Series of Irish Idylls and published in 1895, Strangers at Lisconnel is a sequel to Irish Idylls, a collection of poems by Jane Barlow first published in 1892 and re-published eight more times due to its tremendous success.

The characters in this second collection are very similar as the characters in the first series of poems and the setting is also the same: Irish peasants living in the Irish countryside. The topics introduced in the first collection also return in the second book: the struggle of the characters with their landlords, the hardships that they encounter and must face day by day and the even graver circumstances they must endure as the consequence of the potato famine.

Even though, in her depictions of the characters, she adopts a loving and understanding tone, Jane Barlow herself was of a higher social class than her characters. Born as the daughter of the vice-provost of Trinity College, she spent her childhood and most of her adulthood living in an elegant, comfortable and secluded cottage in one of the suburbs of Dublin. She started publishing poetry after the age of thirty ? she did not trust her talent and she did not believe her poetic work was worth sharing with others, but the good reception of her first book convinced her and she published over a dozen of poetry collections during her life.

Barlow was also a novelist and a regular contributor to the National Literary Society residing in Dublin. She published eleven short story collections and several novels, among them science-fiction stories under various pseudonyms, including Felix Ryark and Antares Skorpios, the penname used by her father as well. Barlow?s literary activity gained the highest recognition when she received the title of honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Dublin.