Professor David Pierce taught at York St John University. He is an internationally noted author, and this is his twelfth book. He has been publishing since 1979. The main focus of his work is Joyce, Yeats and the history of modern Irish writing. His books include the anthology, Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century (2000), his highly-regarded memoir, The Long Apprenticeship (2012), and three books with Yale University Press:James Joyce's Ireland (1992), Yeats's Worlds (1995), and Light, Freedom and Song (2005)