Patrick Kavanagh, A Biography

Antoinette Quinn's acclaimed biography of Patrick Kavanagh, the most important Irish poet between the death of W.B. Yeats and the rise of Seamus Heaney, tells the triumphant story of his journey from homespun balladry through early journal and poetry publications to his eventual coronation as one of the most influential figures in Irish poetry. Kavanagh (1904 1967) was born in County Monaghan, the son of a cobbler-cum-small farmer. He left school at thirteen to work the land but continued to educate himself, reading and writing poetry in his spare time. In 1929 he began contributing verses to the Irish Statesman and was soon publishing in Irish and English journals. His first collection, Ploughman and Other Poems, appeared in 1936 and was followed by an autobiography, The Green Fool, in 1938. In 1939 he moved to Dublin where he spent the rest of his life as a freelance writer and as part of the social and literary scene, keeping company with a gifted generation of writers, among them Flann O'Brien and Brendan Behan. He gained recognition as an important literary voice with his long poem 'The Great Hunger' in 1942. Further collections and the novel Tarry Flynn appeared in the following decades to growing critical acclaim. Published to widespread praise, Patrick Kavanagh, A Biography traces Kavanagh's publishing history as well as revealing what he was writing in the long interval between his books. This engaging, well-researched account of his daily professional life as a writer, his revisions and redraftings, his negotiations with publishers and editors, dispels the view that he was an untutored, gormless genius visited by an occasional flash of inspiration. Patrick Kavanagh, A Biography is the definitive account of Patrick Kavanagh's life and work and should be the standard for years to come. Patrick Kavanagh, A Biography: Table of ContentsIntroduction- No Genealogic Rosary (1850 1910)- Childhood (1904 1918)- Serving his Time (1918 1927)- Dabbling in Verse (1916 1930)- Farmer-Poet (1929 1936)- Towards The Green Fool (1936 1937)- The Green Fool and its Aftermath (1937 1939)- I Had a Future (1939 1941)- Bell-lettres (1940 1942)- The Great Hunger (1941 1942)- Pilgrim Poet (1940 1942)- Marriage and Money? (1942 1944)- The Enchanted Way (1944 1947)- Film Critic (1946 1949)- Tarry Flynn (1947 1949)- From Ballyrush to Baggot Street (1948 1951)- King of the Kids (1949 1951)- Bluster and Beggary (1952 1953)- Trial and Error (1954)- The Cut Worm (1954 1955)- The American Dream (1955 1957)- Noo Pomes (1957 1958)- Come Dance with Kitty Stobling (1959 1960)- Roots of Love (1960 1964)- Sixty-Year-Old Public Man (1964 1965)- Four Funerals and a Wedding (1965 1967)- 'So long'