The silence of Barbara Synge [Paperback]

The silence of Barbara Synge' provides a fascinating companion volume to Bill McCormack's acclaimed 'Fool of the family' (2000), a biography of the playwright J.M. Synge (1871-1909).

Taking the alledged death of Mrs John Hatch (n?e Synge) in 1767 as a focal point, this book explores the varied strands of the Synge family tree in eighteenth and nineteenth century Ireland.

Key events in the family's history are carefully documented, including a suicide in 1769 which is echoed in an early Synge play, the effects of the famine which influenced 'The playboy of the western world' in 1907, and the behaviour of Francis Synge at the time of the union.

'The silence of Barbara Synge' is a unique work of cultural enquiry, combining archival research, literary criticism, and religious and medical history to pull the strands together and relate them to the family's literary descendent J.M. Synge.

Introducing - the Synges from Bridgnorth, Shropshire

Part 1 - Settings

1. Lands Elsewhere: Wicklow

2. Other people: The Hatches

3. A little learning

4. The Mill at Amino

5. The state of the roads

Part 2 - Hatched, matched and despatched

6. An MP and his wife

7. Death in the mountains

8. A battle of wills

9. On debt

Part 3 - The Devil's Glen

10. Roundwood and after

11. Her brother's will, 1792

12. The sceond Archdiaconate

13. Rebellion, union and family romance

Part 4 - Affairs with the moon

14. How Pestalozzi reached Wicklow

15. Melmoth, the Stay-at-Home

16. In Darby's field

Part 5 - Literature at nurse

17. John Hatch, a country doctor

18. Windfalls

19. Work house insurgency

Part 6 - Concerning J.M. Synge (1871-1909)

20. Madness and local government

21. Insulting 'The Playboy'

22. A county in romance

23. The wounded dramatist takes his bow

W. J. McCormaclÓ)