Professor Frank Shovlin B.A., M.A., M.St., D.Phil.

In 2016 I published a monograph on John McGahern's writing style assisted by the award of a Leverhulme Study Abroad fellowship in 2012-13 which I used to spend the year in the McGahern archive at the National University of Ireland, Galway. I returned to Galway in the summer of 2014 courtesy of a Moore Institute Visiting Fellowship. Stemming from this work, I edited 'The Letters of John McGahern', an 850-page volume published by Faber & Faber in 2021 to critical acclaim. In the wake of this publication, I was contracted by Faber to become McGahern's authorized biographer. For the Academic year 2018-19 I worked full time on The Letters as a British Academy/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellow.

My second monograph, 'Journey Westward: Joyce, Dubliners and the Literary Revival', was published by Liverpool University Press in 2012. Chiefly concerned with unpicking some key moments in 'Dubliners', the book suggests that Joyce maintained a fascination with the troubled history between Ireland and its larger island neighbour throughout his writing life.

My doctoral dissertation looked at several Irish literary magazines in the early years of independence, including The Irish Statesman, The Dublin Magazine, Ireland To-Day, The Bell, Envoy and Rann. This work was subsequently revised to become my first monograph, The Irish Literary Periodical 1923-1958, published by Clarendon Press in 2003.