BRIAN LYNCH

William Cowper was the most famous poet of his day. Jane Austen was foremost among his fans, Wordsworth knew his work by heart and William Blake ranked him alongside Milton.
But Cowper is all but forgotten today. Obsessed with God and suicide, loved by many women, his life was tragically cut short by the profound mental illness that dogged his every day.
Yet despite the obsessions that made him a virtual recluse, William Cowper lived out a love-story as intense as any in English literature.
BRIAN LYNCH, LIKE WILLIAM COWPER, IS A MUCH PRAISED POET HIMSELF. SAMUEL BECKETT MADE SPECIAL NOTE OF HIS ‘‘EXCEPTIONAL TALENT’’.
Now, in his first novel, Lynch has achieved an astonishing piece of fiction based on the life of this legendary English poet.
The Winner of Sorrow brings to life a forgotten giant. Intense, exhilarating and masterful in its evocation of the period, this is literary fiction at its finest.
€14.99
ISBN 1904301800

FICTION

The Winner of Sorrow , a novel about the poet William Cowper (1731-1800), published October 2005 by New Island Books, Dublin

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‘‘The Winner of Sorrow is a novel based on the life of the gentle poet, William Cowper - an evocation of his bizarre households and the wider world of late-eighteenth-century England as loving as it is deeply imagined and wholly original. Brian Lynch’s book is a brilliant tragi-comedy, aswirl with contradictory emotions - piety and passion, pity and fear, despair and hope, madness and practicality. Seen from so insightful a perspective.Cowper's wildly troubled life is a thriller, and the reader is tempted to rush forward with the plot. Can the women who love William heal the wounds caused by loss? Can peace ever descend on his turbulent spirit? At the same time, one reads as slowly as possible, the better to prolong the encounter with a book that satisfies on many levels - that is profoundly serious, but also warm, witty, and very beautiful.’’
- Nuala O Faolain

‘‘If you want the low-down and high-down on the delicate, brutal reality of a poet’s life, you must read The Winner of Sorrow ’’
- Paul Durcan

‘‘Beautifully written, poignant, witty and profound.’’
-Clare Boylan

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