Although he died at twenty-nine, having lived to see only one volume of his poems in print, today, 100 years after his death, the life of the Irish poet Francis Ledwidge continues to fascinate successive generations of readers. Born in Slane, County Meath, in 1887, Ledwidge endured a childhood of poverty before leaving school at fourteen to work as a farm labourer, copper miner, road worker and union organiser. Throughout this time he produced an extraordinary body of exquisite lyric poetry. He burst onto the literary scene just before the First World War, in which he served in a British Army uniform despite being a devoted and active Irish Nationalist, and was killed in Flanders. This led to decades of suspicion and neglect in some quarters before Alice Curtayne published her acclaimed biography of the poet in 1972, rightly restoring his reputation. Detailing the remarkable life, loves and tragic death of an exceptionally gifted Irish poet, this classic biography also offers a memorable insight into the life and politics of Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century.

About the Author Born in 1898, Alice Curtayne was both a novelist and historian, who wrote studies of Patrick Sarsfield and Oliver Plunkett, among others. It is, however, for collecting and preserving so much of the poetry of Francis Ledwidge that she is most remembered and cherished today. Married to author Stephen Rynne, she died in 1981.