Maurice Walsh (1879-1964) is an Irish novelist. Its news and novels were an appreciable popular success in the Anglo-Saxon world during the Thirties and then. But it is the film, the quiet Man ( The Quiet Man , 1952) of John Ford, based on its news éponyme, which made it later know internationally.

Its work is composed mainly of news and social novels, of soil (Highlands, Kerry), with the well typified characters and where “the spirit of the places” occupies an important place. It comprises also some historical novels (of which Blackcock' S Feather , from which in 1933 a version shortened with the use of the schools in Ireland was drawn), two detective novels and a play.

Biography

Oldest son of a couple of farmers, John Walsh and Elizabeth Buckley, Maurice Walsh was born on May 2nd, 1879 in Ballydonoghue in the Kerry. He passes there a childhood to the great outdoors, punctuated of shooting parties, fishing and of some memorable brawls (a lifestyle which he will continue to snuff and will evoke largely in its work). He attends the public school with Lisselton, not far from there. His/her father, impassioned reader, very early transmit the taste of the literature to him, just as his teacher. His/her mother encourages it to make career in the public administration. He studies with St Michael' S College of Listowel to prepare with the examination of entry, which he makes a success of with the second test.

He enters on July 2nd, 1901 the British administration of the Accises. Various assignments will be assigned to him during its first years of career, generally in Scotland, in the Highlands. This area will exert on him a durable attraction.

In 1906, it meets in the Moray (Scotland) Caroline Isabel Thomson Begg (1886-1941), called “Toshon”, which it will marry on August 8th, 1908. They will have five children, including two girls who will die in low age: Maurice (1909), Ian (1912?), Mary (1915-1918), Neil (1919) and Elizabeth (1932-1932).

In 1913, it binds friendship with, him also officer of the excises, who will become one of the principal figures of the Scottish literary rebirth of the Twenties.

Convinced Irish nationalist if not militant, Maurice Walsh turns over definitively to Ireland in 1922 to join the administration of the customs and excises of new the free State of Ireland. It settles with its family in the area of Dublin in 1923. He plays an active role within Comhaltas Cána, the trade union of the officers of the customs and excises, of which he will be general secretary (1925-1926) then president (1929-1930).

Its first novel, The Key Above the Door , is published in 1926 and receives an unexpected but very encouraging homage of James Matthew Barrie.

At the end of the Twenties, a semi-vagrant named Thomasheen James O' Gorman sticks to Walsh. He will inspire in Maurice the character of Thomasheen James O' Doran, hero of sixteen of his news.

Maurice Walsh takes his retirement in 1933. Author already recognized, it devotes himself consequently fully to the writing. He is member, and in 1938 president, of PEN club Irish as well as Friends association off the Irish Academy off Letters.

He dies on February 18th, 1964 in Dublin.

Works

Novels and news

Les new and Romance above generally was initially published in the Chambers Newspaper in the United Kingdom and the Saturday Evening Post in the United States. The first work of Maurice Walsh, a news entitled Robbery under Arms , was published in the Weekly Freeman in 1905.

Theater

Poetry

See too

Random links:

Martyrdom | Birch | Lattara | Grenois | Gaber Glavič