In Dialogue with Writing. Clare Boylan’s Non-Fiction

In 1993 Clare Boylan edited a collection of essays by diverse writers on the act of writing entitled The Agony and the Ego. The Art and Strategy of Fiction Writing Explored. Here, Boylan takes the double stance of an outsider, as a critic, and of an insider, as a writer, and her concern with other writers’ work highlights her own preoccupation with writing and creativity, thus providing an interesting insight into her own fiction too. Besides writing seven novels and three collections of short stories, Clare Boylan also produced personal, autobiographical and critical pieces in a variety of essays and newspaper articles. She also showed a rigorous stance as editor in the thorough and engaging Literary Companion to Cats (1994). In particular, Boylan’s non-fiction work includes essays on Kate O’Brien and Molly Keane, as well as an introduction to Maeve Brennan’s posthumous novella The Visitor. Her critical work shows rigorous attention to texts and imagery, but also patterns of affinities with the writers she takes into account. The purpose of this essay is to analyse samples of Clare Boylan’s critical work vis-à-vis her own fiction. Significant cross-references can be identified which cast new perspectives on her literary work.