Flann O'Brien - Collected Works (17 books)

* Flann O'Brien - Collected Works (17 books)

BRIAN O'NOLAN (1911–1966) , whose pen names included FLANN O'BRIEN , was an Irish Civil Service official, novelist, playwright and satirist, who is now considered a major figure in twentieth-century Irish literature. Operating alongside contemporaries like James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, O’Brien carved out a distinct literary space by fusing high modernist experimentation with razor-sharp satire, dark humor, and traditional Irish folklore. His reputation as a novelist rests on a relatively small but profoundly influential body of work that challenged the boundaries of how a story could be told. Beyond his novels, his vast output of journalism and correspondence offers a fascinating, unfiltered window into his brilliant and eccentric mind.

His debut novel, AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS (1939), remains a landmark achievement in metafiction. The book presents a dizzying, multi-layered narrative about a lazy Dublin student who is writing a book about an eccentric author whose own fictional characters eventually rebel against him. By blending ancient Irish myths, gritty Dublin realism, and literary parody, O'Brien created a chaotic masterpiece that famously earned the praise of Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges. Tragically, its commercial success was cut short by the outbreak of World War II, which led to the destruction of the publisher's London storerooms and left the novel largely undiscovered for decades.

Undeterred, O’Brien immediately penned THE THIRD POLICEMAN (completed in 1940, published posthumously in 1967). Today considered his finest work, this darkly comic and surreal thriller follows an unnamed narrator through an absurd, nightmarish afterlife ruled by eccentric, bicycle-obsessed police officers. Because publishers initially rejected it for being "too fantastic," O'Brien hid the manuscript away, claiming to his friends that the pages had blown out of his car window. O’Brien also made a significant impact on Irish-language literature with AN BÉAL BOCHT (1941), later translated as THE POOR MOUTH (1973), a biting satire targeting the romanticization of the rural, Irish-speaking west of Ireland.

For nearly three decades, O'Brien also captivated readers daily under the pseudonym Myles na Gopaleen with his legendary column CRUISKEEN LAWN , which ran in the Irish Times from 1940 until his death in 1966. Later curated into volumes like THE BEST OF MYLES (1968), FURTHER CUTTINGS FROM CRUISKEEN LAWN (1976), and THE HAIR OF THE DOGMA (1977), these collected columns showcase his linguistic genius, mocking bureaucracy, cultural pretension, and the Irish language revival with savage wit. Later in his life, O'Brien returned to English-language novels, publishing THE HARD LIFE (1961), a deeply cynical look at Dublin life, and THE DÁLKEY ARCHIVE (1964), a satiric fantasy which famously features a elderly, bar-tending James Joyce who denies ever writing Ulysses. His five novels – collected here in one volume, THE COMPLETE NOVELS OF FLANN O'BRIEN (2007) – are a monument to his inspired lunacy and gleefully demented genius.

The full scope of his complex personality and literary networking is preserved in THE COLLECTED LETTERS OF FLANN O'BRIEN (2018). This comprehensive volume brings together his witty, cantankerous, and often desperate correspondence with publishers, friends, and editors, mapping the financial and personal struggles behind his creative genius. Through this remarkable bibliography of novels, journalism, and personal letters, Flann O’Brien cemented his legacy as a master of the absurd who subverted the mechanics of fiction itself.


The following books are in ePUB and/or PDF format as indicated:

== NOVELS ==

* At Swim-Two-Birds (Penguin, 2001 / Plume, 1979) – ePUB / PDF*
* Complete Novels (Everyman's Library, 2007) – PDF^
* The Dalkey Archive (Fourth Estate, 2016) – ePUB
* The Hard Life: An Exegesis of Squalor (Souvenir Press, 2011) – ePUB
* The Third Policeman (HarperCollins, 2007) – ePUB

== SHORT FICTION & PLAYS ==

* Plays and Teleplays [ed. Jernigan] (Dalkey Archive, 2013) – ePUB
* Rhapsody In Stephens Green: The Insect Play [ed. Tracy] (Lilliput Press, 2011) – ePUB
* Short Fiction of Flann O'Brien [ed. Murphy & Hopper) (Dalkey Archive, 2013) – ePUB
* Stories and Plays (Penguin, 1977) – PDF
* The Various Lives of Keats and Chapman (Souvenir Press, 2011) – ePUB

== JOURNALISM ==

* At War [ed. Jackson] (Dalkey Archive, 2003) – PDF
* Best of Myles [ed. O'Nolan] (Fourth Estate, 2016 / Dalkey Archive, 1999) – ePUB / PDF*
* Further Cuttings from Cruiskeen Lawn [ed. O'Nolan] (Paladin, 1989) – PDF
* The Hair of the Dogma [ed. O'Nolan] (Paladin, 1989) – PDF
* Myles Away from Dublin [ed. Green] (Lilliput Press, 2011) – ePUB
* Myles Before Myles [ed. Jackson] (Lilliput Press, 2011) – ePUB

= LETTERS ==

* Collected Letters [ed. Long] (Dalkey Archive, 2018) – PDF^

PDF^ courtesy of @Mohamed5438
PDF* courtesy of @pharmakate


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