"Serious and most promising novel." - Irish Times
"Barbara Fitzgerald's
We Are Besieged deserves to be as well-known as the novels of Molly Keane and Elizabeth Bowen." - Robert O'Byrne, Irish Country House historian
WE ARE BESIEGED by Barbara Fitzgerald was originally published in 1946. This fascinating first novel deals with the burning-out of the Anglo-Irish family in 1920 and what happens to them during the subsequent ten years. The backdrop for most of the novel is a Georgian house in Fitzwilliam Square in Dublin, where the family try to deal with the new Ireland in their different ways. Two attractive sisters, the self-willed Isobel and the more endearing Caroline, grow up in a society where there are no officers to dance with, no Viceregal Drawing-rooms to assure them position.
When the British left Southern Ireland, many of the Anglo-Irish remaining in the country felt like aliens, besieged in a hostile land. While some adapted to the regime, others, such as Isobel and Caroline's mother, neither could nor would. Their sons and daughters grew up as a generation that could hardly remember the British. Families were divided against themselves, children against their parents.
Author: Barbara Fitzgerald
Pages: 364
Type: P/B
ISBN: 978-0-9562231-3-5
Publisher: Somerville Press
Date of Publication: 2011