Irish prose fiction

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The first Irish prose fiction, in the form of legendary stories, appeared in the Irish language as early as the seventh century, along with chronicles and lives of saints in Irish and Latin. Such fiction was an adaptation and elaboration of earlier oral material and was the work of a learned class who had acquired literacy with the coming of Latin Christianity. A number of these stories were still available in manuscripts of the late medieval period and even as late as the nineteenth century, though poetry was by that time the main literary vehicle of the Irish language.

The first notable English-language prose fiction in Ireland was the work of Jonathan Swift, who published Gulliver's Travels in 1726. Little of note appeared in English by any resident Irish writer until the nineteenth century, when a number of novelists came to prominence.

Modern prose fiction in Irish owes much to the Gaelic revival at the end of the nineteenth century, when cultural nationalists made a determined effort to create the conditions for a modern literature. A substantial body of short stories and novels appeared in Irish as a result.

Irish prose fiction in English attracted worldwide attention in the course of the twentieth century. Its greatest exponent was James Joyce, a highly influential modernist whose only rival in Irish was Máirtín Ó Cadhain.

Prose fiction in both languages has continued to flourish, with English being the primary vehicle. The short story has received particular attention, with a number of distinguished practitioners.