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Works
Stephen Watt, ed., and intro., Hubert O’Grady Special Number’, Journal of Irish Literature, Vol. XIV, No. 1 & 2 (Jan-May 1985) [var. 13, 1984], includes plays Emigration and Famine, and an essay by Watt, ‘The Plays of Hubert O’Grady]; also O’Grady’s obituary appeared in The Irish Playgoer, Dec. 28 1899, with a photograph of him in the role of Sadler, the villainous timekeeper in The Famine (Watt, ibid., plate 9).
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Criticism
Chris Morash, ‘Sinking down into the Dark’, Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 3, 1 (Spring 1997), pp.75-86, 77ff. [commentary on O’Grady’s 1866 play The Famine.]
See also bibliography in Robert Hogan, ed., Journal of Irish Literature, No. 14 [Hubert O’Grady Number] (Jan 1985).
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Commentary
Stephen Watts, Joyce, O’Casey, and the Irish Popular Theater (Syracuse UP 1991), quotes preface of the Fenian [as infra], and remarks: ‘But newspaper reviewers thought that politics were unblushingly mixed with romance and that the whole - as in the notice given to Eviction by the Evening Herald of 22 Dec. 1899 - was “a sermon preached from behind the footlights [appealing] to popular feeling in a curiously successful fashion”’. (p.57-58.)
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Quotations
The Fenian - Preface: ‘This drama is simply a Romantic Irish Love Story and has nothing to do with Patriotic, Political or Social evils. It takes its title from the fact that the scene is laid in Ireland - and is supposed to take place during the Fenian movement which gives the opportunity for the villain the accuse the hero (Lieut. Tracy) of complicity with the Fenians.’
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Notes
Pop. dram.?: O’Grady was called the most popular of popular dramatists by a disparaging Peter Kavanagh (The Irish Theatre, 1946), a verdict that is expressly challenged by Cheryl Herr in Intro., For the Land They Loved (1991).
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