Tag Archives: Nice
Birth of Frank Harris, Journalist & Novelist
Frank Harris, Irish American editor, novelist, short story writer, journalist and publisher, is born James Thomas Harris in to Welsh parents in Galway, County Galway on February 14, 1855. He is friendly with many well-known figures of his day.
Harris's father, Thomas Vernon Harris, is a naval officer from Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, Wales. While living with his older brother he is, for a year or more, a pupil at The Royal School, Armagh. At the age of twelve he is sent to Wales to continue his education as a boarder at the Ruabon Grammar School in Denbighshire, a time he is to remember later in My Life and Loves. He is unhappy at the school and runs away within a year.
Harris runs away to the United States in late 1869, arriving in New York City virtually penniless. The 13-year-old takes a series of odd jobs to support himself, working first as a shoeshiner, a porter, a general laborer, and a construction worker on the erection of the Brooklyn Bridge. He later turns these early occupational experiences into art, incorporating tales from them into his book The Bomb (1908).
From New York Harris moves to Chicago, where he takes a job as a hotel clerk and eventually a manager. Owing to Chicago's central place in the meat packing industry, he makes the acquaintance of various cattlemen, who inspire him to leave the big city to take up work as a cowboy. He eventually grows tired of life in the cattle industry and enrolls at the University of Kansas, where he studies law and earns a degree, gaining admission to the Kansas Bar Association.
Harris is not cut out to be a lawyer and soon decides to turn his attention to literature. He returns to England in 1882, later traveling to various cities in Germany, Austria, France, and Greece on his literary quest. He works briefly as an American newspaper correspondent before settling down in England to seriously pursue the vocation of journalism.
Harris first comes to general notice as the editor of a series of London papers including The Evening News, The Fortnightly Review and the Saturday Review, the later being the high point of his journalistic career, with H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw as regular contributors.
From 1908 to 1914 Harris concentrates on working as a novelist, authoring a series of popular books such as The Bomb, The Man Shakespeare, and The Yellow Ticket and Other Stories. With the advent of World War I in the summer of 1914, he decides to return to the United States.
From 1916 to 1922 Harris edits the U.S. edition of Pearson's Magazine, a popular monthly which combines short story fiction with socialist-tinted features on contemporary news topics. One issue of the publication is banned from the mails by United States Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson during the period of American participation in World War I. Despite this Harris manages to navigate the delicate situation which faces the left wing press and keeps Pearson's Magazine functioning and solvent during the war years.
Harris becomes an American citizen in April 1921. In 1922 he travels to Berlin to publish his best-known work, his four volume autobiography My Life and Loves (1922–1927). It is notorious for its graphic descriptions of his purported sexual encounters and for its exaggeration of the scope of his adventures and his role in history. A fifth volume, supposedly taken from his notes but of doubtful provenance, is published in 1954, long after his death.
Harris also writes short stories and novels, two books on William Shakespeare, a series of biographical sketches in five volumes under the title Contemporary Portraits and biographies of his friends Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. His attempts as a playwright are less successful. Only Mr. and Mrs. Daventry (1900), which is based on an idea by Oscar Wilde, is produced on the stage.
Married three times, Harris dies of a heart attack in Nice, France on August 26, 1931. He is buried at Cimetière Sainte-Marguerite, adjacent to the Cimetière Caucade, in Nice. Just after his death a biography written by Hugh Kingsmill (pseudonym of Hugh Kingsmill Lunn) is published.
Categories: Irish American, Irish History, Journalism, Literature & Poetry | Tags: Albert S. Burleson, Austria, Berlin, Brooklyn Bridge, Chicago, Cimetière Caucade, Cimetière Sainte-Marguerite, County Galway, Cowboy, Denbighshire, England, Fishguard, France, Frank Harris, Galway, George Bernard Shaw, Germany, Greece, H.G. Wells, Heart Attack, Hugh Kingsmill, Irish American, Journalism, Kansas Bar Association, London, My Life and Loves, New York City, Nice, Oscar Wilde, Pearson's Magazine, Pembrokeshire, Playwright, Porter, Ruabon Grammar School, Saturday Review, Shoeshiner, Short Story, Socialism, The Evening News, The Fortnightly Review, The Royal School Armagh, United States, United States Postmaster General, University of Kansas, Wales, Welsh, William Shakespeare, World War I | Permalink.
Death of Charles Gavan Duffy
Charles Gavan Duffy, Irish nationalist, journalist, poet, and Australian politician, dies on February 9, 1903 in Nice, France. He is the 8th Premier of Victoria and one of the most colourful figures in Victorian political history.
Duffy is born on April 12, 1816 in Dublin Street, Monaghan, County Monaghan. Both of his parents die while he is still a child and his uncle, Fr. James Duffy, who is the Catholic Parish Priest of Castleblayney, becomes his guardian for a number of years. He is educated at St. Malachy's College in Belfast and is admitted to the Irish Bar in 1845. Duffy becomes a leading figure in Irish literary circles.
Duffy, along with Thomas Osborne Davis and John Blake Dillon, founds The Nation and becomes its first editor. Davis and Dillon later become Young Irelanders. All three are members of Daniel O'Connell's Repeal Association. This paper, under Duffy, transforms from a literary voice into a "rebellious organisation."
In August 1850, Duffy forms the Tenant Right League to bring about reforms in the Irish land system and protect tenants' rights, and in 1852 is elected to the House of Commons for New Ross. By 1855, the cause of Irish tenants seems more hopeless than ever. Broken in health and spirit, Duffy publishes a farewell address to his constituency, declaring that he has resolved to retire from parliament, as it is no longer possible to accomplish the task for which he has solicited their votes.
In 1856, emigrates with his family to Australia, settling in the newly formed Colony of Victoria. A public appeal is held to enable him to buy the freehold property necessary to stand for the colonial Parliament. He is immediately elected to the Legislative Assembly for Villiers and Heytesbury in the Western District in 1856. He later represented Dalhousie and then North Gippsland. With the collapse of the Victorian Government's Haines Ministry during 1857, another Irish Catholic, John O'Shanassy, unexpectedly becomes Premier with Duffy his second-in-charge.
In 1871, Duffy leads the opposition to Premier Sir James McCulloch's plan to introduce a land tax, on the grounds that it unfairly penalises small farmers. When McCulloch's government is defeated on this issue, Duffy becomes Premier and Chief Secretary. The majority of the colony is Protestant, and Duffy is accused of favouring Catholics in government appointments. In June 1872, his government is defeated in the Assembly on a confidence motion allegedly motivated by sectarianism.
When Graham Berry becomes Premier in 1877, he makes Duffy Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, a post he holds without much enthusiasm until 1880, when he quits politics and retires to the south of France. He remains interested in both the politics of his adoptive country and of Ireland. He is knighted in 1873 and is made KCMG in 1877. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy dies in Nice, France, at the age of 86 in 1903.
Categories: Irish History, Journalism, Literature & Poetry, Politics & Government | Tags: Australia, Belfast, Castleblayney, Charles Gavan Duffy, Colony of Victoria, County Monaghan, Daniel O'Connell, Electoral District of Dalhousie, Electoral District of Gippsland North, Electoral District of Villiers and Heytesbury, France, Government of Victoria, Graham Berry, House of Commons of the United Kingdom, Irish Bar, Irish Catholic, Irish Nationalism, James McCulloch, John Blake Dillon, John O'Shanassy, Journalist, Monaghan, New Ross (UK Parliamentary Constituency), Nice, Order of St. Michael and St. George, Parliament of Victoria, Poet, Premier of Victoria, Protestantism, Repeal Association, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, St. Malachy's College, Tenant Right League, The Nation, Thomas Osborne Davis, Victorian Legislative Assembly, Young Irelanders | Permalink.
Birth of Sculptor John Hughes
John Hughes, Irish sculptor, is born in Dublin on January 30, 1865.
Hughes is educated at North Richmond Street CBS. He enters the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin in 1878 and trains as a part-time student for ten years. In 1890 he wins a scholarship to the South Kensington School of Art in London, after which another scholarship takes him to Paris, France. He then studies further in Italy.
Hughes is appointed as teacher to the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin in 1894 and in 1902 becomes Professor of Sculpture in the Royal Hibernian Academy School. His last residence in Dublin is at 28 Lennox Street, Portobello.
From 1903 Hughes lives in Italy and in France, dying in Nice in 1941.
Hughes's influences are mainly from the Italian Renaissance and include:
Man of Sorrow; Madonna and Child, both 1901, for St. Brendan's Cathedral, Loughrea
A dying Irish soldier overlooked by Erin, now in the garden of Dublin Castle Conference Centre
Monument to Charles Kickham, in Tipperary
W. E. Gladstone Memorial, intended for the Phoenix Park, but installed instead at Hawarden Castle in 1925
Queen Victoria, unveiled by King Edward VII in 1904 outside Leinster House in Dublin, re-erected in Sydney, Australia in 1987.
Categories: Arts & Music, Irish History | Tags: Australia, Congregation of Christian Brothers, Dublin, Dublin Castle, Edward VII, France, Hawarden Castle, Italian Renaissance, Italy, John Hughes, Leinster House, London, Loughrea, Metropolitan School of Art, Nice, Paris, Phoenix Park, Portobello, Royal Hibernian Academy, Sculptor, South Kensington School of Art, St. Brendan's Cathedral, Sydney, Tipperary | Permalink.
Death of Padraic Colum, Poet & Novelist
Padraic Colum, Irish-born American poet, novelist, biographer, playwright, and children's author whose lyrics capture the traditions and folklore of rural Ireland, dies in Enfield, Connecticut on January 11, 1972. He is one of the leading figures of the Irish Literary Revival.
Colum was born on December 8, 1881 in Columcille, County Longford, the first of eight children born to Patrick and Susan Columb. In 1892, the family moves to Glasthule, near Dublin and he attends the local national school. He starts writing after he finishes school and meets a number of the leading Irish writers of the time, including W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and Æ. He also joins the Gaelic League and is a member of the first board of the Abbey Theatre. He becomes a regular user of the National Library of Ireland, where he meets James Joyce and the two become lifelong friends.
Influenced by the literary activity of the Celtic revival centered in Dublin at the turn of the century, Colum publishes the collection of poetry Wild Earth (1907). He co-founds The Irish Review in 1911, then three years later settles permanently in the United States. His varied literary output includes volumes of poetry including Dramatic Legends (1922) and Creatures (1927), plays such as Broken Soil (first performed 1903) and The Land (1905), novels, anthologies of folklore and children's books. The reminiscence Our Friend James Joyce (1959) is written with his wife Mary (Maguire), a well-known literary critic.
The Colums spent the years from 1930 to 1933 living in Paris and Nice, where Padraic renews his friendship with James Joyce and becomes involved in the transcription of Finnegans Wake. After their time in France, the couple moves to New York City, where they do some teaching at Columbia University and City College of New York. He is a prolific author and publishes a total of 61 books, not counting his plays. While in New York, he writes the screenplay for the 1954 stop-motion animated film Hansel and Gretel: An Opera Fantasy. It is his only screenplay.
Mary dies in 1957 and Colum completes Our Friend James Joyce, which they had worked on together. It is published in 1958. He divides his later years between the United States and Ireland. In 1961 the Catholic Library Association awards him the Regina Medal.
Padraic Colum dies on January 11, 1972, at the age of 90, in Enfield, Connecticut. He is buried in St. Fintan's Cemetery in Sutton, Dublin.
Categories: Arts & Music, Irish American, Irish History, Literature & Poetry | Tags: Abbey Theatre, Biographer, City College of New York, Columbia University, Connecticut, Conradh na Gaeilge, County Longford, Dublin, Enfield, Finnegans Wake, France, George William Russell, Glasthule, Hansel and Gretel: An Opera Fantasy, Irish Literary Revival, James Joyce, Lady Gregory, Mary Colum, National Library of Ireland, National School, New York City, Nice, Novelist, Padraic Colum, Paris, Playwright, Poet, Regina Medal, St. Fintan's Cemetery, Sutton, United States, William Butler Yeats | Permalink.
Birth of Poet John Montague
Irish poet John Montague is born on Bushwick Avenue at St. Catherine's Hospital in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, on February 28, 1929. His father, James Montague, an Ulster Catholic, from County Tyrone, had come to the United States in 1925.
Life in New York is difficult during the Great Depression, so John and his two brothers are shipped back to Ireland in 1933. The two eldest are sent to their maternal grandmother's house in Fintona, County Tyrone, but John is sent to his father's ancestral home at Garvaghey, then maintained by two spinster aunts.
John studied at University College Dublin in 1946. Stirred by the example of other student poets he begins to publish his first poems in The Dublin Magazine, Envoy, and The Bell, edited by Peadar O'Donnell. But the atmosphere in Dublin is constrained and he leaves for Yale University on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1953.
A year of graduate school at University of California, Berkeley convinces Montague that he should return to Ireland. He settles in Dublin working at the Irish Tourist Office. In 1961 he moves to Bray, County Wicklow. A regular rhythm of publication sees his first book of stories, Death of a Chieftain (1964) after which the musical group The Chieftains is named, his second book of poems, A Chosen Light (1967), Tides (1970).
All during the 1960s, Montague continues to work on his long poem, The Rough Field, a task that coincides with the outbreak of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement. A Patriotic Suite appears in 1966, Hymn to the New Omagh Road and The Bread God in 1968, and A New Siege, dedicated to Bernadette Devlin which he reads outside Armagh Jail in 1970.
In 1972, Montague takes a teaching job at University College Cork, at the request of his friend, the composer Seán Ó Riada, where he inspires an impressive field of young writers including Gregory O'Donoghue, Seán Dunne, Thomas McCarthy, William Wall, Maurice Riordan, Gerry Murphy, Greg Delanty and Theo Dorgan.
Montague settles in Cork in 1974 and publishes an anthology, the Faber Book of Irish Verse (1974) with a book of lyrics, A Slow Dance (1975). Recognition is now beginning to come, with the award of the Irish American Cultural Institute in 1976, the first Marten Toonder Award in 1977, and the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award for The Great Cloak in 1978.
In 1987, Montague is awarded an honorary doctor of letters by the State University of New York at Buffalo. He serves as distinguished writer-in-residence for the New York State Writers Institute during each spring semester, teaching workshops in fiction and poetry and a class in the English Department of the University at Albany. In 1998, he is named the first Irish professor of poetry, a three-year appointment to be divided among Queen's University Belfast, Trinity College Dublin, and University College Dublin. In 2008, he publishes A Ball of Fire, a collection of all his fiction including the short novella The Lost Notebook.
John Montague dies at the age of 87 in Nice, France on December 10, 2016 after complications from a recent surgery.
Categories: Irish History, Literature & Poetry | Tags: Bernadette Devlin, Bray, Brooklyn, Buffalo, Catholic, Cork, County Tyrone, County Wicklow, Dublin, Envoy, Faber Book of Irish Verse, Fintona, France, Fulbright Fellowship, Garvaghey, Gerry Murphy, Great Depression, Greg Delanty, Gregory O'Donoghue, Irish American Cultural Institute, Irish Tourist Office, John Montague, Maurice Riordan, New York, New York City, New York State Writers Institute, Nice, Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement, Peadar O'Donnell, Queen's University Belfast, Seán Ó Riada, Seán Dunne, State University of New York, The Bell, The Chieftains, The Dublin Magazine, Theo Dorgan, Thomas McCarthy, Trinity College Dublin, Ulster, United States, University at Albany, University College Cork, University College Dublin, University of California Berkeley, William Wall, Yale University | Permalink.
Birth of Charles Gavin Duffy in County Monaghan
Charles Gavan Duffy, Irish nationalist, journalist, poet, and Australian politician, is born on April 12, 1816 in Dublin Street, Monaghan Town, County Monaghan. Duffy is the 8th Premier of Victoria and one of the most colourful figures in Victorian political history.
Both of his parents die while he is still a child and his uncle, Fr. James Duffy, who is the Catholic Parish Priest of Castleblayney, becomes his guardian for a number of years. He is educated at St. Malachy's College in Belfast and is admitted to the Irish Bar in 1845. Duffy becomes a leading figure in Irish literary circles.
In 1871, Duffy leads the opposition to Premier Sir James McCulloch's plan to introduce a land tax, on the grounds that it unfairly penalised small farmers. When McCulloch's government is defeated on this issue, Duffy becomes Premier and Chief Secretary. The majority of the colony is Protestant, and Duffy is accused of favouring Catholics in government appointments. In June 1872, his government is defeated in the Assembly on a confidence motion allegedly motivated by sectarianism.
When Graham Berry becomes Premier in 1877, he makes Duffy Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, a post he holds without much enthusiasm until 1880, when he quits politics and retires to the south of France. Duffy remains interested in both the politics of his adoptive country and of Ireland. He is knighted in 1873 and is made KCMG in 1877. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy dies in Nice, France, at the age of 86 in 1903.
Categories: Irish History, Politics & Government | Tags: Bar Council of Ireland, Belfast, Castleblayney, Charles Gavan Duffy, Colony of Victoria, Dalhousie, Daniel O'Connell, Government of Victoria, Graham Berry, House of Commons, Irish Catholic, James McCulloch, John Blake Dillon, John O'Shanassy, Monaghan, New Ross, Nice, North Gippsland, Parliament of Victoria, Repeal Association, Speaker of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, St. Malachy's College, Tenant Right League, The Nation, Thomas Osborne Davis, Victorian Legislative Assembly, Young Irelanders | Permalink.