Sir, - I refer to the question asked by the author of In Times Eye (August 11th): "Has any publisher got in mind the issuing of a short life of Wolfe Tone?'
The short life of Tone desired by your columnist is already available. Published by Wolfhound Press in 1996, Michael Stanley's Famous Dubliners (£9.99 paperback) is an anthology of short, concise biographies of six famous sons of Dublin - Tone, Joyce, Yeats, Swift, Wilde and Carson.
Containing excerpts from diaries, letters, trial transcripts and the figures' own writings, Famous Dubliners is widely accessible, considered by Brian Fallon (The Irish Times, June 8th, 1996) as taking an approach which is "popular and not literary or specialised but without deliberate `writing down' or aiming at the lower levels of cultural tourism."
Famous Dubliners is recommended for anyone who knows a little about Tone and his fellow Dubliners, but would like to know more. - Yours, etc., CAROLINE HEALY,
Wolfhound Press,
Dublin 1.