Introduction The near eradication of Gaelic culture and vernacular Irish literature during the colonial period in the centuries following the Norman invasion resulted in a vacuum that was only slowly filled by a new form of recognizably Irish literature, though written in the English language. This was for a long time known as Anglo-Irish literature, the term ‘Irish literature’ being reserved for the new literature written in Irish that emerged in the early 20th century. Anglo-Irish beginnings Whilst earlier centuries threw up such figures as James Ussher and George Farquhar, the Anglo-Irish literary tradition begins in the age of George Berkeley and Jonathan Swift. In the ensuing decades, Trinity College, Dublin, produced such writers as Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, and R B Sheridan, all of whom made their livelihoods and reputations in England. Maria Edgeworth, the daughter of an ‘improving’ landlord in County Longford, wrote the first distinctly Irish novel ( Castle Rackrent ) in…