Jonathan Allison specialises in British and Irish Literature of the 20th century. Particular interests include the work of W.B.Yeats and his circle; T.S.Eliot and Modernism; Louis MacNeice and the Auden generation. His annotated edition of The Selected Letters of Louis MacNeice (Faber & Faber) is forthcoming in 2009, and he has edited several essay collections, including Yeats's Political Identities (1996), Poetry and Contemporary Culture (with Andrew Roberts, 2002) and Bound for the 1890s (2007). He has published widely on modern and contemporary Irish poets, including Yeats, MacNeice, Patrick Kavanagh, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Brendan Kennelly, Paul Muldoon and Ciaran Carson. He has worked as an editorial assistant with The London Review of Books and has twice been a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh. He was formerly general editor of the series Irish Literature, History and Culture, published by the University Press of Kentucky. He has been Director of the W.B. Yeats International Summer School, Sligo (2003-05) and will return to direct the school on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary in 2009. Hear his plenary talk on MacNeice at the conference website for the 2007 Louis MacNeice Centenary Conference, Queen's University, Belfast.

Areas of Specialty:

• Twentieth-Century British and Irish Literature
• Modernism
• Poetry
• Textual Studies

Books

• (Editor) Selected Letters of Louis MacNeice.  London & Boston: Faber and Faber, 2009.
• (Editor) Bound for the 1890s: Essays on Writing and Publishing in Honor of James G. Nelson. With a foreword by G. Thomas Tanselle. High Wycombe: Rivendale Press, 2006.
• (Co-editor with Andrew Roberts) Poetry and Contemporary Culture: the Question of Value. Edinburgh University Press & Columbia University Press, 2002.
• (Editor) Poetry for Young People: William Butler Yeats. With illustrations by Glenn Harrington. New York: Sterling, 2002.
• (Editor) Yeats's Political Identities. University of Michigan Press, 1996.
• Patrick Kavanagh: A Reference Guide. With a foreword by Maurice Harmon. New York: G. K. Hall, 1996.

Recent Articles

• "Yeats, Coole and Ballylee." William Butler Yeats in Context. (Eds. David  Holdeman and Ben Levitas). Cambridge University Press. Forthcoming 2009.
• "'Playing around with quotations and stuff:' Ciaran Carson's Snow," in Carson et Cetera: A Festschrift for Ciaran Carson (eds. Ian Sansom and Richard Irvine). Queen's University, Belfast, 2008, 109-13.
• "War, Passive Suffering and the Poet." Sewanee Review (Spring) 2006, 207-19.
• "The Reception of W.B. Yeats in Ireland, since 1950." The Reception of W.B.Yeats in Europe (ed. K.P.S.Jochum). London: Continuum Books, 2006, 231-54.
• "W.B.Yeats and Politics." Cambridge Companion to W.B.Yeats. (Eds. John Kelly and Marjorie Howes). Cambridge University Press, 2006, 185-205.
• "Magical Nationalism, Lyric Poetry and the Marvelous: W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney." Companion to Magical Realism. (Eds. Stephen Hart, Wen-Chin Ouyang). London: Boydell & Brewer, 2005, 228-36.
• "W.B.Yeats (1865-1939)." Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature (ed. David Scott Kastan), Vol 5. Oxford University Press, 2005, 355-63.
• "'Friendship's Garland': the Manuscripts of Seamus Heaney's 'Fosterage.'" Yearbook of English Studies 35 (London), 2005, 58-71. Reprinted in Poetry Criticism, Detroit: Gale. Forthcoming 2010.
• "Louis MacNeice, Travel and the Sea." 'Da Ulisse A...: Il Viaggio Nelle Terre D'oltremare'. (Ed. G. Revelli). Edizioni ETS (Italy), 2004, 69-78.
• "Patrick Kavanagh and Anti-Pastoral." Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry. (Ed. Matthew Campbell). Cambridge University Press, 2003, 42-58.
• "Covert Operations: Vera of Las Vegas." Irish Literary Supplement, Fall 2002.
• "Contemporary Poetry and the Great War." In Poetry and Contemporary Culture: the Question of Value. (Eds. Jonathan Allison, Andrew Roberts). Edinburgh University Press, 2002, 209-26.
• "W.B. Yeats, Space and Cultural Nationalism." ANQ (University of Kentucky) 14.4 (Fall) 2001, 55-66.
• "Acts of Memory: Poetry Since 1949." In Writing the Irish Republic: Literature, Politics, Culture, 1949-1999. (Ed. R.Ryan), London: Macmillan, 2000, 44-63.
• "Seamus Heaney and the Romantic Image." Sewanee Review (Spring) 1998, 184-201. Reprinted (1) Infocus: Linking People and Education, State Library of New South Wales, Australia, fall 2000; (2) Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 225, Farmington Hills, MI: Thompson Gale, 2007, 110-116.

Recent Courses

Poetry and Modernism, 1890-1945 (740); Contemporary British Poetry and Culture Since 1950 (642), Bibliography and Research Methods (600); Yeats and Joyce (481G); British Writers of the Thirties (481G); Modern British Poetry (481G); Scottish Literature (481G); Survey of English Literature II (332); Joyce’s Ulysses in Context (330)

Library Exhibitions

Four Nobel Laureates: Yeats, Shaw, Beckett, Heaney. Special Collections, University of Kentucky, May-June 2006; Scottish Books and Manuscripts: An Exhibition. Special Collections, University of Kentucky, November 2005; Irish Literature 1699-1944 : An Exhibition. Special Collections, University of Kentucky, February - March 2003.