BOOKWORM is a memoir of childhood reading, which gives fascinating glimpses into the world of children’s books and libraries in 1950s’ Belfast. It is an engaging and idiosyncratic approach to social and literary history and the author’s lifelong involvement with books and book collecting. Patricia Craig is, as well as being a leading critic and anthologist, the co-author of the unrivalled tour de force and landmark text You’re a Brick, Angela! A New Look at Girls’ Fiction 1839-1975, which is an essential source book for anyone interested in girls’ reading and popular culture. Patricia Craig is well known as an author and book critic both in Ireland and the UK, and we are expecting considerable media attention. This book will captivate the attention of readers interested in children’s books, book collecting and Belfast history and topography.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Patricia Craig was born and brought up in Belfast. She moved to London in the 1960s, but has always retained strong links with her native city. In 1999 she returned with her husband, the painter Jeffrey Morgan, to live in Northern Ireland. She is the author, with Mary Cadogan, of three critical studies, beginning with You’re a Brick Angela! in 1976. She has written biographies of Elizabeth Bowen and Brian Moore. Her memoir, Asking for Trouble, was published in 2007, and A Twisted Root: Ancestral Entanglements in Ireland, in 2012. An acclaimed critic and anthologist, she is the editor of many anthologies including The Ulster Anthology, The Belfast Anthology, The Oxford Book of Ireland and The Penguin Book of British Comic Stories. She is an honorary lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast and is a member of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Advisory Board.

‘Patricia Craig is not only one of Ireland’s greatest readers, she is also, as Bookworm confirms, line by line, page by page, one of its finest, wittiest writers.’ Glen Patterson, novelist
‘Compelling....a magical and authoritative book’. Marianne Elliot, historian.
‘Mesmerizing... an enchanting book about enchantment. I couldn’t put it down’. Michael Longley, poet.

"What Patricia Craig offers, with humour and sensibility, is a memoir in books, an eirinic language of libraries in a war-torn world and a friendly meditation by a 'picker-up of every variety of enchantment to be found between the covers of books'" The Independent

"Craig's love affair with books is bounteously rendered in this overview of formative reading, a nostalgic look of the delights of literary escapism and book collecting, libraries and a bygone Belfast". Belfast Newsletter

"Enlightening, quotable and entertaining" Times Literary Supplement

"Joyous and extremely enjoyable book" Irish Times

"A fabulous book that will appeal to 'bookworms' from any era" Ulster Tatler

 
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ISBN: 978 0 9927364 53
208pp
Paperback with flaps
Memoir
3 September 2015
Somerville Press