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The 20 Greatest Irish Authors of all Time

By September 12, 2015March 16th, 2018Discussion and Recommendations

In our latest poll we asked you who your favourite Irish author of all time is. For the purposes of this poll we’re covering geographical Ireland, so both The Republic or Ireland, and Northern Ireland. As always your replies were plentiful and collating them left us with twenty stand out authors for our list.

Here is our list, according to you these are the twenty greatest Irish authors of all time.

Maeve Binchy

Maeve Binchy Snell was a hugely popular novelist from the Republic of Ireland, selling more than 40 million copies worldwide and securing her top place in our favourite Irish authors list.

Oscar Wilde

Probably the most quotable writer of all, Wilde lived a colourful life and his novels and controversy live on today, he comes a very close second in our list.

Frank McCourt

Angela’s Ashes is one of the most popular memoirs of our time and a Pulitzer Prize winner to boot. Not strictly Irish, born in New York, he still secured third place on our list.

W. B Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, born in 1865 and from the Republic of Ireland, whose work is still popular today.

James Joyce

James Joyce was an Irish poet and novelist from Dublin, Ireland and is considered to be one of the most influential writers of the early twentieth century. You certainly seemed to agree, giving him a place on our list!

So that’s our top five Irish authors of all time and completing our top ten is:

Anne McCaffrey
Cecilia Ahern
Patrick Taylor
Marian Keyes
Colm Toibin

And so many of you commented, it seemed a shame not to include the final ten authors who got the most votes, and they are:

Bram Stoker
C. S Lewis
Eoin Colfer
Tana French
Brendan Behan
Colum McCann
George Bernard Shaw
John Barnville
Jonathon Swift
Roddy Doyle

So there it is according to you, the twenty greatest Irish authors of all time!

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