‘The sun, a crucible of nuclear rage, Knows nothing of such ends: Such a culmination Of history seen at sunset from the harbour, Meaningless, astonishing and simple.’ Since the original version of Anthony Cronin’s classic sequence, The End of the Modern World, first appeared in 1989, it has been acclaimed as one of the most singular achievements in twentieth-century Irish poetry. Revised and extended since then by the author, this new edition is the first time that this major work has been published in its entirety as a solo volume. Its publication allows Cronin’s psychic history of western civilisation to finally stand alone as a landmark work in its own light.