Dublin is the only city in the world to produce three Nobel Prize winners for literature. An indication that something remarkable was taking place, not only in the capital but in the whole country, came in the extraordinary confluence of talent that appeared at the end of the nineteenth century. Ulick O'Connor has created a brilliant composite portrait of the figures who dominated this Irish literary renaissance. Celtic Dawn is acute, passionate, and sometimes partisan; a pioneer work of biography, and compulsive reading even for those not closely acquainted with the figures that fill its pages.