Every volume in the works of James Clarence Mangan, published by Irish Academic Press, opens with the same "General Introduction." This post will give an excerpt or two from that introduction.

"The works of James Clarence Mangan (1803 - 1849) in a full collected edition with a biography of the poet and a comprehensive bibliography are here published for the first time. From the age of 14 until his death at 46, Mangan wrote and published prose and poetry of immense variety of content and style.....In all, some thousand poems and dozens of prose pieces -- fiction, criticism, essays -- comprise his canon. Yet no complete collection of his poetry or his prose has ever before been attempted.

"A few editions of Mangan's poetry have been published sporadically over the years, but despite the compilers' enthusiasm and good intentions, each volume has suffered from a cultural or a personal bias. The editors do not hesitate, for instance, to suppress part of one poem, to combine several versions of another, or to rewrite portions of lines as they think best....Only a handful of his poems have become sturdy fixtures in anthologies of Irish writing, and his prose is practically unknown.

"....the most eminent voices of Irish literature have spoken in his praise. W. B. Yeats declared Mangan 'our one poet raised to the first rank by intensity.' James Joyce described Mangan as 'that creature of lightning, who has been, and is, a stranger among the people he ennobled, but who may yet come by his own as one of the greatest romantic poets among those who use the lyrical mode.'   

"Mangan should now cease to be a stranger. Ellen Shannon-Mangan's biography, the first volume in this series, dispels the sensational myth and legend that have enveloped the poet's life. Jacques Chuto's bibliography of both the poetry and prose provides a definitive reference to Mangan's work and its sources. Together with those, this complete edition of Mangan's writings, appearing nearly a century and a half after his death, makes it possible for his typically ironic prophecy to be fulfilled:

"Mine inkstand is the Well of Naksheb; -- and from each
Imperishable drop I spread along the page
Another Veiled Prophet utters a mystic speech,
To be translated only by a future age."