The Burning Of Bridget Cleary
  • Published: 1 September 2006
  • ISBN: 9781844139347
  • Imprint: Pimlico
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $24.99

The Burning Of Bridget Cleary

A True Story

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Jan 2011
Paperback
1 Sep 2006
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An extraordinary piece of social history - the lurid and fascinating story of a murder that shook Ireland at the turn of the century.

Winner of the Irish Times Prize for Non-Fiction

In 1895 twenty-six-year-old Bridget Cleary disappeared from her house in rural Tipperary. At first, some said that the fairies had taken her into their stronghold in a nearby hill, from where she would emerge, riding a white horse. But then her badly burned body was found in a shallow grave. Her husband, father, aunt and four cousins were arrested and charged, while newspapers in nearby Clonmel, and then in Dublin, Cork, London and further afield attempted to make sense of what had happened.

In this lurid and fascinating episode, set in the last decade of the nineteenth century, we witness the collision of town and country, of storytelling and science, of old and new. The torture and burning of Bridget Cleary caused a sensation in 1895 which continues to reverberate more than a hundred years later.

Winner of the Irish Times Prize for Non-Fiction
  • Published: 1 September 2006
  • ISBN: 9781844139347
  • Imprint: Pimlico
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $24.99
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About the author

Angela Bourke

Angela Bourke is the author of The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story (winner of several awards, including the Irish Times Literature Prize for Irish Non-Fiction), Maeve Brennan and By Salt Water. Born in Dublin, where she still lives, she spent long periods in the USA, and has held visiting academic positions at Harvard University, Boston College and the University of Minnesota. A leading scholar in interdisciplinary Irish Studies, Angela Bourke writes in Irish and English, and makes frequent appearances on television and radio. She is Senior Lecturer in Irish at University College Dublin, The National University of Ireland, Dublin.

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Praise for The Burning Of Bridget Cleary

Fascinating... passionate and thought-provoking... a creative, stimulating book that deserves to win many readers

Patrick French, Sunday Times

One of those rare books that becomes an instantaneous classic

Independent

'A sad but spellbinding story, told with artistic tact and a humane concern for all caught up in the terrible event. The Burning of Bridget Cleary draws on oral tradition, reportage, popular culture and high literature to show how the past may persist in the present

Declan Kiberd

The story of Bridget Cleary's death is a parable for a changing world, a well-researched and horrifying account of what could happen in the region where myth and modernity collide...As dramatic a murder mystery as any devotee of the genre could long for...And it is the rich abundance of ideas that makes this a uniquely important historical work

Irish News

Scrupulous, clear micro-history at its best

Marina Warner, Books of the Year, Times Literary Supplement

Angela Bourke's fascinating, disturbing and powerful book tells a compelling and tragic story

Financial Times

The story of the killing of Bridget Cleary is so brilliantly researched and narrated that it becomes a parable of the cultural and political relationship between Ireland and Britain at the end of the last century... A classic account

Seamus Deane

Exemplary in its restraint, scrupulousness and empathy, it is also beautifully written

Roy Foster, Books of the Year, Times Literary Supplement