Irish writers have had a long association with America. Oscar Wilde visited in 1882 where he was well-received by Irish Americans on account of being a son of the patriotic writer Speranza. Douglas Hyde, Ireland’s future president, spent seven months in America raising funds for the Gaelic League. During his four visits to America, W. B. Yeats spent a year of his life in this country. James Joyce never visited America, but his work was the subject of an important legal case in New York which led the way for the publication of Ulysses in America in 1934, 12 years after it first appeared.
Daniel Mulhall took up duty as Ireland's 18th Ambassador to the United States in August 2017. He was born and brought up in Waterford and undertook his undergraduate and post-graduate studies at University College Cork where he specialised in modern Irish history.
Ambassador Mulhall maintains a keen interest in Irish history and literature. He is the author of A New Day Dawning: A Portrait of Ireland in 1900 (Cork, 1999) and co-editor of The Shaping of Modern Ireland: A Centenary Assessment (Dublin, 2016) and has made numerous contributions to books, newspapers and journals published in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and Britain.