Private Histories is a complete literary history of the American Irish during the first part of the twentieth century. Ron Ebest offers a fresh perspective on familiar novelists, dramatists, and poets, introduces readers to a number of important writers who are often overlooked, and reveals rarely considered aspects of Irish-American social history.

Ebest analyzes themes of particular importance to early twentieth-century Irish Americans—such as religion, marriage, family, eceonomic hardship, social status, and education—in the writings of well-known authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Eugene O’Neill. He also explores these issues in the works of lesser known authors such as the Vanity Fair satirist Anne O’Hagan, labor activist and novelist Jim Tully, muckraking journalist Clara Laughlin, and the mystery writer John T. McIntyre.

Ebest’s highly readable style makes Private Histories an excellent book for undergraduate and graduate courses on Irish-American literature and history, as well as for general readers interested in this fascinating subject.