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Life
Author of literary biographies and other works incl. Jules Verne (1977); The Heart Grown Brutal: The Irish Revolution in Literature from Parnell to the Death of Yeats, 1891-1939 (1977); Leopold Bloom: A Biography (1981), a fictional extrapolation; with Peter van Kamp, Flann O’Brien (1987), a biography; Dublin Churches (1989); Clongowes Wood School (1990); The Real World of Sherlock Holmes (1991); James Joyce, The Years of Growth (1992); The Story of Clerys, with Tony Farmar (1992), O’Flaherty’s Ireland (1996) and The Irish 100 (NY: Simon & Schuster 2000); Denis Guiney (2008).
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Quotations
The Heart Grown Brutal: The Irish Revolution in Literature from Parnell to the Death of Yeats, 1891-1939 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1977): ‘The thesis of this book is that the cultural revival made possible the political revolution by creating a new ideal of Ireland, and that the literature of the revival provides what might almost be called “the secret history” of the Irish revolution.’ (p.xi.) Further: ‘It was O’Leary who encouraged Maud Gonne in her early politics; and who sent Yeats to read Eugene O’Curry on the ancient Celts. Some other friend suggests he read O’Grady’s version of the Celtic myths and sagas […] just as Maud Gonne became the personification of Irish nationalism, so Yeats was identified with the older, Celtic Ireland of myth.’ (p.22; quoted in Brendan T. Mitchell, PG Dip., UU 2009.)
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References
University of Ulster Library holds The Heart Grown Brutal: The Irish Revolution in Literature from Parnell to the death of Yeats, 1891-1939 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan 1977); Jules Verne: Inventor of Science Fiction (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1978); James Joyce [Gill’s Irish Lives] (Dublin: M H Gill 1980); with Peter van de Kamp, Flann O’Brien: An Illustrated Biography (London: Bloomsbury 1987); Clongowes Wood: the History of Clongowes Wood College, 1814-1989 (Gill & Macmillan 1989); Leopold Bloom: A Biography (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1981), Do., rep. as The Life of Leopold Bloom: a novel (West Cork: Niwot; Colorado: Roberts Rinehart 1992); James Joyce, The Years of Growth, 1882-1915: A Biography (Schull: Niwot; Colorado: Roberts Rinehart 1992; London: Kyle Cathie 1992).
Belfast Public Library holds Dublin Churches (Gill & Macmillan 1989), 238pp., [0717117006]; also Helen Litton, The Irish Civil War: An Illustrated History (Wolfhound 1995), picture research by Peter Costello. QUB holds with Tony Farmar, The Very Heart of the City: The Story of Denis Guiney and Clerys (Clery & Co. 1992), 150pp., ills. and ports.
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Notes
Life of Leopold Bloom (1981; Roberts Rinehart 1992) - characterised by John Cosgrave as ‘a triumph of aesthetic perversity, the novel that Joyce deliberately chose not to write.’ (Review for Times Literary Supplement, 31 July 1992.)
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