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The Swinging Light

Keep The Light On

James Stephens

Author

James Stephens

9 February 1880 – 26 December 1950

James Stephens, born in Dublin, Ireland, was an Irish novelist and poet. His father died when Stephens was two years old, and his mother remarried when he was six years old. He attended school with his adoptive brothers, Thomas and Richard Collins, before graduating as a solicitor's clerk. By the early 1900s Stephens was increasingly inclined to socialism and the Irish language (he spoke and wrote Irish) and by 1912 was a dedicated Irish Republican. He was a close friend of the 1916 leader, Thomas MacDonagh, who was then editor of *The Irish Review* and deputy headmaster in St Enda's, and later manager of the Irish Theatre. His growing nationalism brought a schism with his adoptive family, but probably won him his job as registrar in the National Gallery of Ireland, where he worked from 1915-25, having previously had an ill-paid job with a firm of solicitors. Stephens produced many retellings of Irish myths which are marked by a rare combination of humour and lyricism. He also wrote several original novels (*The Crock of Gold*, *Etched in Moonlight*, *Demi-Gods*) based loosely on Irish wonder tales. Stephens began his career as a poet under the tutelage of poet and painter Æ (George William Russell). Stephens's first book of poems, *Insurrections*, was published in 1909. His last book, *Kings and the Moon*, published in 1938, was also a volume of verse. Stephens's influential account of the 1916 Easter Rising, *Insurrection in Dublin*, describes the effect of the deaths by execution of his friend Thomas MacDonagh and others as being "like watching blood oozing from under a door". MacDonagh was the first of the leaders who was tried and shot. Stephens later lived between Paris, London and Dublin. During the 1930s he was a friend of James Joyce. During the last decade of his life, Stephens found a new audience through a series of broadcasts on the BBC. Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stephens_(author)

Bibliography

Books

30 books

Prentice Hall Literature -- Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes -- Bronze Level cover

Prentice Hall Literature -- Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes -- Bronze Level

2002

Kate Kinsella, Aesop, Joan Aiken, Sherwood Anderson, Russell Baker, Basho Matsuo, Ray Bradbury, Lewis Carroll, Sandra Cisneros, Lucille Clifton, Olivia E. Coolidge, Bill Cosby, Harold Courlander, E. E. Cummings, Karen Cushman, Walter De la Mare, Charles Dickens, James Dickey, Emily Dickinson, Annie Dillard, Jacqueline Dineen, Jack Finney, Robert Frost, Ernesto Galarza, Chief Dan George, Nikki Giovanni, Reid Goldsborough, Alex Haley, Virginia Hamilton, Thomas Hardy, Ernest Hemingway, O. Henry, James Herriot, Edward D. Hoch, Richard Holler, Phillip Hoose, Israel Horovitz, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Barbara Jordan, Rudyard Kipling, Jon Krakauer, Maxine Kumin, William W. Lace, Don Lessem, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Naomi Long Madgett, Eve Merriam, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Pat Mora, Walter Dean Myers, Ogden Nash, Alfred Noyes, Charles Osgood, Raymond R. Patterson, Josephine Preston Peabody, Juliet Piggott, Edgar Allan Poe, Anna Quindlen, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Wendy Rose, Cynthia Rylant, Carl Sandburg, William Saroyan, Rod Serling, Robert Service, William Shakespeare, Shel Silverstein, Isaac Bashevis Singer, William Jay Smith, Gary Soto, James Stephens, Amy Tan, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Piri Thomas, James Thurber, Mark Twain, James Ramsey Ullman, Alice Walker, Geoffrey C. Ward, Anne Terry White, Walt Whitman, Laurence Yep, Gillian Standing, Paul Stillwell, Edith Wharton, Jim Willard, Terry Willard, Jane Wilson

Prentice Hall Literature--Bronze cover

Prentice Hall Literature--Bronze

1991

Sumner Braunstein, Teresa Palomo Acosta, Aesop, Paul Annixter, Isaac Asimov, Mary Austin, Russell Baker, Basho, Pura Belpré, Ray Bradbury, Gwendolyn Brooks, Pearl S. Buck, Inea Bushnaq, Buson Yosa, Lewis Carroll, Denise Chavez, Lucille Clifton, Olivia E. Coolidge, Harold Courlander, E. E. Cummings, Dorothy De Wit, Charles Dickens, James Dickey, Emily Dickinson, Annie Dillard, Margery Facklam, Alan Feinstein, Jack Finney, Robert Frost, Ernesto Galarza, Chief Dan George, Nikki Giovanni, Ernest Hemingway, O. Henry, Oliver Herford, James Herriot, Will Hobbs, Edward D. Hoch, Israel Horovitz, Langston Hughes, Washington Irving, Carol Kendall, Rudyard Kipling, Kyorai, Richard Lederer, H. N. Levitt, Yao-Wen Li, Vachel Lindsay, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Phyllis McGinley, Naomi Cornelia Long Madgett, Barbara Mahone, Ekkehart Malotki, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Alfred Noyes, Mary O'Neill, Otsuji, Raymond R. Patterson, Josephine Preston Peabody, Juliet Piggott, Edgar Allan Poe, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, James Whitcomb Riley, Theodore Roethke, Wendy Rose, Arthur W. Ryder, Carl Sandburg, Mari Sandoz, Sam Selvon, Rod Serling, Robert Service, Blanche L. Serwer-Bernstein, William Shakespeare, Leslie Silko, Shel Silverstein, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Alexander McCall Smith, William Jay Smith, Gary Soto, James Stephens, Amy Tan, Mildred D. Taylor, Edwin Way Teale, Hernando Tellez, Piri Thomas, James Thurber, James Ramsey Ullman, Mai Vo-Dinh, Alice Walker, Anne Terry White, Walt Whitman, Jade Snow Wong, Sarah Ann Leuthner, Andrew A. Rooney, William Saroyan, Joan Aiken, Wilson Rawls, Quentin Reynolds

Prentice Hall Literature--Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes--Bronze cover

Prentice Hall Literature--Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes--Bronze

2001

Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Aesop, Joan Aiken, Ai-Ling Louie, Sherwood Anderson, Russell Baker, Basho Matsuo, George Blecher, Alain Boubil, Ray Bradbury, Daniel Crump Buchanan, Inea Bushnaq, John Caird, Lewis Carroll, Антон Павлович Чехов, Sandra Cisneros, Lucille Clifton, Olivia E. Coolidge, Bill Cosby, Harold Courlander, E. E. Cummings, Karen Cushman, Jim Davis, Walter De la Mare, Charles Dickens, James Dickey, Emily Dickinson, Annie Dillard, Jacqueline Dineen, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Susan Essoyan, Jack Finney, Robert Frost, Ernesto Galarza, Chief Dan George, Nikki Giovanni, Reid Goldsborough, Alex Haley, Virginia Hamilton, Michael Hardwick, Mollie Hardwick, Thomas Hardy, Ernest Hemingway, O. Henry, James Herriot, Edward D. Hoch, Richard Holler, Phillip Hoose, Israel Horovitz, Johnette Howard, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Washington Irving, Barbara Jordan, Rudyard Kipling, Jon Krakauer, Herbert Kretzmer, Maxine Kumin, Charles Kuralt, William W. Lace, Gary Larson, Don Lessem, H. N. Levitt, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mary MacLeod, Jay Macpherson, Naomi Long Madgett, Mai Vo-Dinh, Hugh Masekela, Eve Merriam, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Minamoto No Sanetomo, Pat Mora, Walter Dean Myers, Myoe, Jean-Marc Natel, Ogden Nash, Alfred Noyes, Trevor Nunn, Naomi Shihab Nye, Mary Oliver, Mary O'Neill, Charles Osgood, Raymond R. Patterson, Josephine Preston Peabody, Juliet Piggott, Edgar Allan Poe, Anna Quindlen, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Paul Reiser, Wendy Rose, Christina Georgina Rosetti, Cynthia Rylant, Carl Sandburg, William Saroyan, John Godfrey Saxe, Rod Serling, Robert Service, Blanche Serwer-Bernstein, Idries Shah, William Shakespeare, Shel Silverstein, Isaac Bashevis Singer, William Jay Smith, Gary Soto, James Stephens, John Strege, Amy Tan, Sara Teasdale, Hernando Tellez, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Piri Thomas, James Thurber, Lone Thygesen-Blecher, Mark Twain, James Ramsey Ullman, Alice Walker, Geoffrey C. Ward, Anne Terry White, Walt Whitman, Richard Wilbur, William Butler Yeats, Laurence Yep, Jane Yolen