Quench the Lamp - Hardcover

Taylor, Alice

4.24

116 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312054939 ISBN 13: 9780312054939

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1990

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The author relates memories from her childhood in the Irish countryside, describing a vanished pattern of life that revolved around the farm, family, and neighbors, and the slow changes that marked Ireland's movement toward the future

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About the Author:

Alice Taylor lives in the village of Innishannon in County Cork, in a house attached to the local supermarket and post office. Since her eldest son has taken over responsibility for the shop, she has been able to devote more time to her writing. Alice Taylor worked as a telephonist in Killarney and Bandon. When she married, she moved to Innishannon where she ran a guesthouse at first, then the supermarket and post office. She and her husband, Gabriel Murphy, who sadly passed away in 2005, had four sons and one daughter. In 1984 she edited and published the first issue of Candlelight, a local magazine which has since appeared annually. In 1986 she published an illustrated collection of her own verse. To School Through the Fields was published in May 1988. It was an immediate success, launching Alice on a series of signing sessions, talks and readings the length and breadth of Ireland. Her first radio interview, forty two minutes long on RTE Radio's Gay Byrne Show, was the most talked about radio programme of 1988, and her first television interview, of the same length, was the highlight of the year on RTE television's Late Late Show. Since then she has appeared on radio programmes such as Woman's Hour, Midweek and The Gloria Hunniford Show, and she has been the subject of major profiles in the Observer and the Mail on Sunday. To School Through the Fields quickly became the biggest selling book ever published in Ireland, and her sequels, Quench the Lamp, The Village, Country Days and The Night Before Christmas, were also outstandingly successful. Since their initial publication these books of memoirs have also been translated and sold internationally. Alice has also written fiction: her first novel, The Woman of the House, was an immediate bestseller in Ireland, topping the paperback fiction lists for many weeks and the saga continues in two further books. One of Ireland's most popular authors, her most recent book is Tea and Talk.

From Library Journal:

This collection of vignettes continues the story of Taylor's childhood in Ireland--a story begun with her Irish best seller To School Through the Fields ( LJ 3/1/90). Each piece is a quick, entertaining glance at Irish life in the Forties and Fifties, a life slowly moving to more modern times. Recorded here are the characters, events, and traditions of a rural life that are sadly lost to memory when a society succumbs to technology. Books such as Taylor's preserve for us all an otherwise fading oral tradition.
- Kenneth J. Cook, Melbourne, Fla.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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