From her earliest awareness of herself as a writer, Eavan Boland defined her identity as an Irish woman. “Even now, my parents seem to me perfectly Irish, completely of their time and place”, Boland wrote in her 2011 collection A Journey with Two Maps (Boland, A Journey with Two Maps, 27). As an aspiring young student and poet in Dublin in the 1960s, Boland was drawn to a traditional vision of Irish literary life, “imagining myself there” as  “I loved that narrative with its irresistible mix of dark violence and Victorian sentiment” (Boland, Object Lessons,  62/63). The inducement to “write in that cursive and approved script can seem, for the unwary …

3482 words

Citation: Lewis, Leon. "Eavan Boland". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 July 2020 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5517, accessed 29 March 2024.]

5517 Eavan Boland 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.