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Paul Delaney, Anthologisation and Irish Short Fiction: Magnitudes of Telling (New York: Routledge, 2025)

Gérald Préher
p. 265-269
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Paul Delaney, Anthologisation and Irish Short Fiction: Magnitudes of Telling (New York: Routledge, 2025)

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1An elegant volume in the “Routledge Studies in Irish Literature” series, Paul Delaney’s monograph is a 214-page book that includes a detailed index and is made up of three chapters preceded by a thorough introduction and followed by stimulating conclusions. Each chapter includes a work cited section which makes all the references easy to find and means that the five chapters may all be read independently. This does not imply that the book is disjointed but, rather, that it is reader-friendly. Working at the intersection of book history, genre theory, and contemporary Irish cultural analysis, Delaney examines how anthologies have shaped—indeed, continue to shape—the landscape of Irish short fiction. Rather than treating anthologies as neutral containers or convenient pedagogical tools, he reads them as cultural agents whose aesthetic, material, and ideological decisions leave lasting marks on national literary identity. From the opening pages of his introduction, Delaney signals his method: attentive, historically grounded, and resistant to simplistic narratives about Irish cultural “talent” or national “genius.”

2Exploring recent short fiction from Ireland, Delaney “argues that short stories are characterised by their capacity to unsettle, to disrupt, to slow down, and to make play” (13). The introduction reflects upon the nature, evolution, and richness of the short story as a literary form, highlighting its ability to capture specific moments with agility and sensitivity. Delaney emphasizes the diversity and flexibility of the short story that enables writers to experiment with various forms and tackle complex subjects. The author notes that lately short fiction has become especially popular as it fits “an age that likes things short” and it targets “an increasingly mobile readership” that requires instant recognition (4). In order to illustrate his ideas on anthologization, Delaney addresses “short fiction in its many guises, from short-shorts to long stories, and from discrete texts, included in periodicals and online forums, to stories that were published in volumes, edited anthologies, miscellanies, and collections” (5). He reminds readers of the importance of revision and adaptation in the creative process. Referring to contributions to short story criticism by Frank O’Connor, David Marcus, Charles E. May’s, Elke D’hoker or Chris Mourant, the introduction also reflects upon the tradition of the Irish short story, often considered a national genre, in relation to oral culture, the representation of marginalized groups, and its adaptation to contexts of transition.

3Delaney situates the book within a moment of upheaval: the post-Celtic Tiger crash, the austerity years, and the wave of political and social disillusionment that followed. He foregrounds not only economic instability but also the revelations of systemic abuse exposed by the Ryan Report (2009), which precipitated “an existential as much as an economic crisis” (Eamon Maher and Eugene O’Brien). This context frames Delaney’s analysis of the short story as a genre particularly attuned to fragmentation, uncertainty, and moral questioning. Moreover, the author positions the book at a nexus of theoretical change. He aligns his work with shifts in short-story studies toward materialist approaches, echoing claims by scholars such as Elke D’hoker and Chris Mourant that short fiction must be read within its “polytextual publication context”—the magazines, digital platforms, anthologies, and paratexts that shape both meaning and reception (6-7). This invites reflection on the role of publishers, media, literary competitions, digital platforms, and anthologies in the production, reception, and redefinition of the contemporary Irish short story.

4The first chapter, “Defining and Rethinking ‘the Irish short story’” explores traditional conceptions and developments in Irish short fiction, insisting on historical biases that have favored a masculine, rural, and realistic vision while marginalizing female voices and alternative styles. Delaney is critical of anthologies published between 1950 and 1990, as well as school textbooks, for their underrepresentation of women writers and their reinforcement of preconceived notions about the Irish literary tradition. The author thus dismantles the essentialist notion of the Irish short story—a term he rightly flags as reifying and restrictive. He traces the persistence of the belief that Irish writers possess a special aptitude for the short form, surveying explanations that range from romanticized ideas of “the gift of the gab” to V.S. Pritchett’s claim that Irish writers excel because they inhabit a society of secrets and veiled emotional depths. These frameworks, Delaney argues, are reductive: they oversimplify a diverse literary tradition and mask the material mechanisms that have historically shaped Irish short fiction. In order to illustrate how such narratives manifest in literary culture, Delaney offers a compelling reading of Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s satirical paired stories, “A Literary Lunch” (2007) and “City of Literature” (2017). He highlights how Ní Dhuibhne exposes gatekeeping, misogyny, and institutional arbitrariness within Irish arts funding bodies—and how the short story’s own mythology circulates within such institutions. Echoing Mary Lavin’s famous metaphor, the experimental novelist in the first story, Francie Briody, recalls the dictum that a short story is “an arrow in flight” and comes to reflect upon creative-writing clichés. Delaney notes that while Lavin’s description is powerful, Francie’s rigid adherence to it reveals how mythologies of form can limit rather than liberate artistic practice. One of the chapter’s strengths is its mapping of gendered erasures in canonical Irish short-story anthologies well into the late twentieth century. Delaney demonstrates that early anthologies—including Devin Garrity’s 44 Irish Short Stories (1955) and Franck O’Connor’s Modern Irish Short Stories (1957)—featured only tokenistic inclusions of women such as Mary Lavin, Elizabeth Bowen, or Edith Somerville and Violet Martin (Martin Ross), while overlooking the breadth of women’s writing then or previously available. By juxtaposing this history with the flourishing of women writers in the twenty-first century—Keegan, Enright, O’Connor, Caldwell, Erskine, Rooney, Gallagher, and many others—Delaney underscores how recent anthologists consciously respond to, and attempt to redress, decades of exclusion. This chapter argues that “the Irish short story” is not a fixed tradition but a construct that must be continually interrogated. It sets the stage for the book’s central argument: that anthologies play an outsized role in shaping the boundaries of this imagined tradition.

5In the second chapter, “‘A gathering of possibilities’: Acts of Anthologisation,” Delaney takes up Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s assertion that every anthology carries a “spurious claim to completeness” and inevitably “devalues difference” through its selective inclusions and exclusions. Delaney’s intervention is to neither condemn nor idealize anthologies but to examine their cultural operations and consequences. He explores a range of Irish short-story anthologies published in the last three decades, showing how they serve multiple—and sometimes contradictory—functions. First, he examines how anthologists function as de facto curators of national taste making it clear that even decisions motivated by space constraints or personal preference leave structural legacies. For example, he shows how the dominance of certain male writers in older anthologies helped cement a narrow understanding of the Irish short-story tradition—an understanding that contemporary anthologists now actively seek to revise. Then, Delaney provides analyses of Sinéad Gleeson’s The Long Gaze Back (2015) and The Glass Shore (2016), showing how Gleeson’s work embodies a feminist historiography, foregrounding women’s writing not as supplemental but as structurally integral to Irish literary heritage. Similarly, The Art of the Glimpse (2020) is read as both an archival rescue mission and an argument for expansion, featuring LGBTQ+ writers, immigrants, and other previously marginalized voices. Anthologies sometimes appear as platforms for experimentation: Young Irelanders (2015), edited by Dave Lordan, exemplifies a “mix-tape” approach to anthologization—an embrace of emergent voices, tonal diversity, and aesthetic openness. Delaney highlights Lordan’s rejection of totalizing authority (“no claims to totality or grand authority whatsoever”), viewing the anthology as a snapshot of a vibrant moment rather than a definitive statement. Looking at genre expansion and market forces using John Connolly’s Shadow Voices (2021) as an illustration, Delaney situates the volume within broader reevaluations of genre boundaries. He also probes the economic pressures that shape story selection—marketability, publisher vision, and prize culture. Throughout the chapter, Delaney reveals the role of editors like Dan Bolger of New Island and Declan Meade of The Stinging Fly. Drawing on interviews and contextual materials, he follows Ita Daly’s argument that editors are “shadowy creatures” whose labor shapes literary ecosystems even though their influence is rarely acknowledged publicly. The chapter concludes that anthologies do far more than collect stories: they construct—and reconstruct—the very idea of Irish short fiction.

6Chapter 3, “‘Magnitudes of telling’: Portability and Revision,” shifts from the external framing of anthologies to the internal malleability of the short story itself. Here Delaney draws on David Miller’s idea that the short story allows for “magnitudes of telling”—not merely because of interpretive openness but because stories often exist in multiple textual versions as they travel across platforms (magazines, radio broadcasts, collections, and anthologies). Delaney uses examples from across contemporary Irish writing to show that short stories are rarely static. They are revised, expanded, condensed, recontextualized, or altered—sometimes subtly, sometimes substantially—when republished. Even inadvertent changes (mistaken transcription, editorial error) can produce new variants. This materially grounded insight reinforces the book’s broader claim: the short story is inherently portable and therefore inherently unstable. Delaney calls attention to how republication confers authority. A version included in a widely used anthology may become the “definitive” text by virtue of access and visibility, even when earlier or more experimentally daring versions exist—the chapter demonstrates that this is not merely a bibliographical curiosity but a practice that shapes literary interpretation. Several examples support the author’s claim that stories are not static but acquire shifting meanings through editorial decisions. Again, Delaney ties this to Irish cultural history. Because Ireland’s short-story ecosystem relies heavily on magazines, competitions, and independent presses, the same story frequently accumulates a complex textual biography.

7The book’s conclusion brings together the main arguments by asserting that the short-story tradition in Ireland is neither fixed nor exclusively national. Delaney reiterates that anthologies have historically shaped perceptions of Irish short fiction more strongly than authorial choices or critical debates. Yet, he emphasizes that contemporary anthologization practices are reshaping the field in vital ways. Anthologies, in Delaney’s view, do not merely reflect literary culture; they are engines of change within it. They determine how texts circulate, which voices enter public consciousness, and how traditions are structured or dismantled. In this sense, Anthologisation and Irish Short Fiction encourages readers and scholars alike to consider not only what stories are told but how they are packaged, reordered, and contextualised.

8Although anthologies are essential to teaching and reading Irish short fiction, the mechanics of anthologisation have not received sustained academic attention. Paul Delaney provides the first comprehensive analysis of this process, grounding his study in archival detail, critical theory, and an impressive breadth of reading. The study’s methodology—combining paratextual analysis, reception history, textual comparison, and cultural criticism—is consistently rigorous. The argument is clear: anthologies shape literary traditions, not the other way around. Anthologisation and Irish Short Fiction is a landmark contribution to Irish literary studies and to the study of the short story more broadly. The book illuminates how Irish short fiction has been shaped by editorial decisions, cultural narratives, and the migratory nature of stories themselves. In so doing, Delaney not only reframes the history of the Irish short story but also opens new pathways for imagining its future.

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Gérald Préher, « Paul Delaney, Anthologisation and Irish Short Fiction: Magnitudes of Telling (New York: Routledge, 2025) »Journal of the Short Story in English, 85 | 2025, 265-269.

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Gérald Préher, « Paul Delaney, Anthologisation and Irish Short Fiction: Magnitudes of Telling (New York: Routledge, 2025) »Journal of the Short Story in English [En ligne], 85 | Automn 2025, mis en ligne le 12 décembre 2025, consulté le 16 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/jsse/4936

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Auteur

Gérald Préher

Université d'Artois, UR 4028, Textes et Cultures, F-62000 Arras, France
Gérald Préher is a Professor of American Literature at the Université d’Artois, where he is a member of the Texts and Cultures research group. He defended a doctoral dissertation on southern literature and has written essays on various 19th and 20th century writers. He co-edited several collections of essays on American literature and culture, is the editor of the Journal of the Short Story in English and the general editor of the review Résonances. His most recent publications include a study of Carson McCullers’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter as part of a book on Solitude and Community in the Novel (Atlande), a collection of critical essays on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tales, and a book on the American 1920s and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, co-written with Christine Chollier. His latest articles focus on Elizabeth Spencer, Fitzgerald and Joyce Carol Oates.

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