Published in 1921, The Old Soak presents humorous reminiscences of an old drunkard who talks about life before prohibition. In addition, he gives the readers a history of the world from his recollection. 'The Old Soak' is a fictitious character who is an enemy of prohibition, created by Don Marquis, an American newspaperman and wit.

Anglo-Irish Modernism and the Maternal argues that a focus on the construction of mother-figures in Irish culture illuminates the extraordinary achievement of the Irish modernists. Essentially, the seminal Irish modernists - Moore, Joyce, Synge, Yeats and O'Casey - resisted those mother-figures sanctioned by cultural discourses, re-writing her in order to elude her. In this, they not only re-constituted language and representation, they accessed and re-figured their own creative selves.