Mercier Press Hardback €19.99

Tales of Irish Enchantment is a collection of six of Patricia Lynch’s classic children’s stories, told with the imagination and warmth for which she was renowned. From the heroic tale of Cuchulain to the humorous story of the Kingdom of the Dwarves, this lavishly illustrated edition revitalises the age-old legends of Ireland, as exciting and entertaining today as when they were first told.

Born in Cork in 1898 and brought up in an environment which fostered a love of Irish lore, legend and storytelling, Patricia Lynch’s early years saw her lead a nomadic existence, taking her to Britain, Europe and Egypt, before she settled in her late teens and early twenties in London.

Here she worked as a freelance contributor to various newspapers and magazines, her writing including the pamphlet Rebel Ireland, which was to become a famous eye-witness account of the Easter 1916 events in Dublin, the city which became her permanent home following her marriage in 1922 to the English writer R. M. Fox. By the early 1930’s her first children’s stories were appearing in serialised form in such newspapers as The Irish Press. The novel which subsequently appeared in 1934 as The Turf-Cutter’s Donkey and which remains her best known work, had its origins here. Between then and her death in 1972, she had written some fifty children’s books and around two hundred short stories.