The literary and dramatic work of J.M. Synge is most famous for the 'riots' provoked by his 1907 play The Playboy of the Western World and, indeed, this was neither the first nor the last time that Synge's dramas incited passionate disagreements.

But, one hundred years on, it's clear that his writings are amongst Ireland s most brilliant and significant, as well as controversial. Here, for the first time, a single volume collects all of Synge's published plays, including Playboy, along with his Poetry and Translations, and the prose works that detail his travels in The Aran Islands, In Wicklow, In Kerry and In Connemara. These are works of lasting and universal value, bringing together the sensibilities of Romanticism and Modernism, and arguing passionately for the freedom of the imagination.