Martin J. McHugh

Life
?-1951; employed by Irish Times; moved to England; several daughters, including Mary Francis McHugh; author of comic short stories for the popular press; three short plays performed at the Abbey Theatre, including A Minute’s Wait (Abbey, 1914); died 11. Nov. DIL

 

Works
Fiction, Straws in the Wind (Aberdeen: Moran 1896); with Henry T. Hunt Grubb, A Modern Mage (London: Simpkin, Marshall 1904).

Drama (One-act plays), A Minute’s Wait (Dublin: Duffy [1922]); The Philosopher (Dublin: Duffy [1922]); Tommy Tom-Tom (Dublin: Duffy [1922]); A Girl like Mary (Dublin: Duffy 1935]); The Trifler (Dublin: Duffy [1946]).

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References
Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1979), remarks, his unpublished letters to Joseph Holloway are incredibly garrulous and so mind-bogglingly boring that, if printed (which they should not be) they would provide something of an anti-literary comic masterpiece’.

 

Notes
A Minute’s Wait , produced at the Abbey Theatre in 1914, was later formed a segment of John Ford's film The Rising of the Moon, featuring Jimmy O'Dea. Note that Sean O’Casey utilised the same situation in his one-act play The Moon Shines on Kylenamoe.

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