Poets and the Peacock Dinner: The Literary History of a Meal

Lucy McDiarmid’s study is an absorbing work of rigorous scholarship consistently enlivened by a sharp and delightful wit. Its triumph resides in a lovingly meticulous unfolding of the webs of significance which radiate from this small gathering: literary homosociality, the practical business of coteries, the development of modernist poetics, assumptions about gender and creativity, and the politics of anti-imperialism. Few indeed are the books which so substantially vindicate the most ambitious claims of literary-historical scholarship.

Lucy McDiarmid is Marie Frazee-Baldassarre Professor of English at Montclair State University. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, she is the author or editor of five previous books. Her scholarly interest in cultural politics, especially quirky, colorful, suggestive episodes, is exemplified by her most recent book, The Irish Art of Controversy, as well as by Poets and the Peacock Dinner. She is also a former president of the American Conference for Irish Studies.