It will be hard to repeat the achievement of Yeats, Shaw, Beckett and Heaney in the next 75 years
Seamus Heaney poses with the Nobel Prize for Literature he received from Sweden's King Carl Gustav XVI during the Nobel ceremonies in Stockholm on December 10th, 1995. Photograph: Jan Collsioo /AFP via Getty ImagesThat means we are a quarter way through this century without an Irish writer getting as much as a sniff of a Nobel laureateship. A century ago, Ireland already had one award in the bag with WB Yeats’s prize in 1923 and another on the way as George Bernard Shaw was honoured in 1925.
Shaw built his reputation in the spotlight of the London stage while Beckett benefited from also being a literary figure in France, whose prize was collected for him by the French ambassador in Stockholm. Heaney’s standing as an Ulster poet probably gave him added appeal at a time when peace was on the horizon in Northern Ireland.
Lauryn Hill and the Fugees in Dublin review: Everything fans hoped for in a great show combining soul and powerEven if we are lucky enough to produce 21st-century writers of the same high calibre, there is no guarantee of a repeat performance. The fact is that, just like at the Olympic Games, the bigger countries tend to dominate the Nobel medal table.
There is now far greater gender balance among laureates. In the years before Yeats picked up his award, only one woman had been honoured, the Swedish novelist, Selma Lagerlöf in 1909. Indeed, in the prize’s first half-century, only eight woman were chosen. Since the year 2000, nine women have triumphed, which may be a pointer to future Irish prospects.
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