The predominant religion in Ireland is Christianity, with the largest church being the Roman Catholic Church. Ireland's constitution states that the state may not endorse any particular religion and guarantees freedom of religion.
For a comparatively small country, Ireland has made a disproportionate contribution to world literature in all its branches, in both the Irish and English languages.
The island's most widely-known literary works are undoubtedly in English. Particularly famous examples of such works are those of James Joyce, Bram Stoker, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde and Ireland's four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature; William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney.
Ireland is an island in northwest Europe in the north Atlantic Ocean whose main geographical features include low central plains surrounded by a ring of coastal mountains.