Monday the 12th
Colm Toibin Books
The Master, The Blackwater Lightship, The Heather Blazing, The South, The Story of the Night, Finbars Hotel (Contributory)
Colm Toibin Links
The Official Colm Toibin Website
Site http://www.colmtoibin.com/
Colm Toibin was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford in the southeast of Ireland in 1955. Three of his grandparents were born in the town or close to the town. One great-grandfather owned Whelan's, or Whaelan's, public house (since demolished)on the Island Road; another great- grandfather worked as a stonemason in the town; another was a small farmer outside the town; the fourth great- grandfather was a farmer near Tullow in County Carlow. His grandfather Patrick Tobin was a member of the IRB, as was his grand-uncle Michael Tobin. Patrick Tobin took part in the 1916 Rebellion in Enniscorthy and was subsequently interned in Frongach in Wales. (See 'The Rising' by Bairbre Toibin; see also 'Frongoch' by ; see also 'The Easter Week Rising in Enniscorthy' by Henry Goff in 'Enniscorthy 2000', published by St Senan's Parish to mark the advent of the third millenium in Enniscorthy.) His uncle Padraig Toibin, who died in 1995, worked as a journalist on the local newspaper The Enniscorthy Echo. He fought in the War of Independence and on the Republican side in the Civil War.
Colm Toibin - Contemporary Writers
Site http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth6
Irish novelist and journalist Colm Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford in Ireland in 1955 and was educated at University College Dublin where he read History and English. After graduating, he lived and taught in Barcelona, a city that he later wrote about in Homage to Barcelona (1990). He returned to Ireland and worked as a journalist before travelling through South America and Argentina. He is the author of a number of works of fiction and non-fiction and is a regular contributor to various newspapers and magazines. He was awarded the E. M. Forster Award in 1995 by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is a member of Aosdána, an Irish organisation founded to promote the arts.
Colm Toibin - Powells
Site http://www.powells.com/authors/toibin.html
It's a rare and beautiful thing when all of the critics fall in love with the same book at the same time. Such a phenomenon has visited Colm Tóibín's The Master, and the superlatives are quickly running out: "a small tour de force of a novel" (The Times Literary Supplement); "marvelously intelligent and engaging" (Booklist); "audacious, profound, and wonderfully intelligent" (The Guardian).
Colm Toibin - Penguin
Site http://www.penguin.ca/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000032032,00.html
Colm Tóibín is an Irish writer and journalist. He has written works of fiction and non-fiction, and edited several anthologies and collections of essays that include The South, The Master, which won the Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year, and The Blackwater Lightship, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
Colm Toibin - The Master
Site http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/the_master/
The Master is Colm Toibin's fictional account of five years of Henry James's life when he moved from failure to a renowned fiction writer. The novel begins with the opening, and closing, of his play Guy Domville and James's escape to Ireland to hide from his humiliation. James then comes back to London, follows Oscar Wilde's trial, acquires his retreat in Rye, and falls in love with a young sculptor in Italy. More than just chronicling the events of these years in his life, Colm Toibin bring James to life, showing how the forces that shaped his life also shaped his writing.
"What once was life, he thought, is always life" - The Master
"We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence."
W. B. Yeats, speech in the Irish Senate, June 11, 1925