Thirty years after The Gallery Press published Selected Poems of James Clarence Mangan (edited by Michael Smith, with a foreword by Anthony Cronin) the young poet and scholar David Wheatley has returned to original sources to distil, from an enormous and uneven oeuvre and for a new generation, the essential, enduring glories of the poetry of an inspired soul.

Born in Dublin in 1970, David Wheatley now lectures at the University of Hull. The Gallery Press publishes his two collections, Thirst (1997) and Misery Hill (2000) which contains 'Sonnets to James Clarence Mangan'.

He has a tremendous ear for effective refrains, lines which take hold of the reader every time that they are sounded…He is surprisingly modern in the way he seems at home not with himself but with many selves. …this handsomely produced selection is a fine introduction…