Author: Gerald Griffin |
The Collegians (Hb)In 1819 the body of a young woman was washed ashore near Kilrush in Co. Clare. Soon after, John Scanlon, son of one of the leading county families was arrested and brought to trial for murder. The brutal murder of "The Colleen Bawn" was to prove, a decade after the event, the ideal framework for a novel in which Griffin vividly expressed both himself and the age in which he lived. The novel combines a hero whose curious psychology paralleled the author's own with a vivid and universal picture of a society in decay.
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