Facts and Fictions of Anglo-Irishness

Book excerpt: The writer, essayist, biographer, and diplomat Sir Shane Leslie (1885-1971) is a remarkable, although little known and even less researched personality of Anglo-Irish culture. Although his many publications rarely reached a second edition, they are highly valued as cultural-historical documents. His novel Doomsland (1923) has received critical praise as 'a bildungsroman of exceptional interest which has been most unfairly neglected.' This monograph aims to compensate for this unjustified neglect by trying to rediscover Leslie through his fictional and essayistic work. The research for this thesis included a visit to Castle Leslie in Ireland, Co. Monaghan, explorations of the family archives in Dublin and Belfast, and, as well as interviews with the writer's son, Sir John Leslie.