Austin Clarke (1896-1974) is known as a poet, a playwright, a broadcaster and a novelist. In the later part of his life his work became better known principally through the support given by Liam Miller and the Dolmen Press in publishing his Collected Plays (1963) and later single plays, and volumes of poems, culminating in his Collected Poems (1974). His work as a reviewer was ceaseless, and during his life he wrote over 1,500 reviews, assessing over 5,000 books, but it must be as one of twentieth century Ireland's most important poets that he is best known. Clarke's plays are less well known, both perhaps because they are verse plays, and also because they have been out of print for so many years. The publication of a selection of them is therefore long overdue, and it includes The Son of Learning, The Flame, Black Fast, The Kiss, As the Crow Flies, The Viscount of Blarney, The Second Kiss, Liberty Lane, the hitherto unpublished play The Frenzy of Sweeney and St Patrick's Purgatory, a translation of a play by Calderón, the essays "Verse Speaking" and "Verse-Speaking and Verse Drama" and a bibliographical checklist. The selection has been made and is introduced by Mary Shine Thompson. It is the fourteenth volume in the Irish Drama Selections series (ISSN 0260-7962).