The Burning Of Bridget Cleary: A True Story
Angela Bourke
In 1895 twenty-six-year-old Bridget Cleary disappeared from her house in rural Tipperary. At first, some said that the fairies had taken her into their stronghold in a nearby hill, from where she would emerge, riding a white horse. But then her badly burned body was found in a shallow grave. Her husband, father, aunt and four cousins were arrested and charged, while newspapers in nearby Clonmel, and then in Dublin, Cork, London and further afield attempted to make sense of what had happened.
In this lurid and fascinating episode, set in the last decade of the nineteenth century, we witness the collision of town and country, of storytelling and science, of old and new. The torture and burning of Bridget Cleary caused a sensation in 1895 which continues to reverberate more than a hundred years later.
Winner of the Irish Times Prize for Non-Fiction
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About Angela Bourke
Reviews for The Burning Of Bridget Cleary: A True Story
Patrick French
Sunday Times
One of those rare books that becomes an instantaneous classic
Independent
Scrupulous, clear micro-history at its best
Marina Warner, Books of the Year
Times Literary Supplement
Angela Bourke's fascinating, disturbing and powerful book tells a compelling and tragic story
Financial Times
The story of Bridget Cleary's death is a parable for a changing world, a well-researched and horrifying account of what could happen in the region where myth and modernity collide...As dramatic a murder mystery as any devotee of the genre could long for...And it is the rich abundance of ideas that makes this a uniquely important historical work
Irish News
Exemplary in its restraint, scrupulousness and empathy, it is also beautifully written
Roy Foster, Books of the Year
Times Literary Supplement
'A sad but spellbinding story, told with artistic tact and a humane concern for all caught up in the terrible event. The Burning of Bridget Cleary draws on oral tradition, reportage, popular culture and high literature to show how the past may persist in the present
Declan Kiberd The story of the killing of Bridget Cleary is so brilliantly researched and narrated that it becomes a parable of the cultural and political relationship between Ireland and Britain at the end of the last century... A classic account
Seamus Deane