Eight Great Dublin Writers

Jonathan Swift 1667 – 1745

Swift is best known for his satirical masterpiece ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, which depicts the hero Lemuel Gulliver’s travels to various fantasy lands, including Lilliput, which is inhabited by a race of tiny people who are highly pompous, and to Brobdingnag, whose inhabitants find their stories of England absurd. This satire later became a children’s story. He also wrote many other satires, including ‘A Tale of a Tub’ and numerous political tracts, including ‘The Drapier Letters’, which have made Swift a national hero due to his defiance of Britain. He was Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin from 1713 to 1745.

Oliver Goldsmith 1730 – 1774

Oliver Goldsmith’s literary reputation stems from his two comedies, “The Good-natured Man” and “She Stoops to Conquer” and his novel, “The Vicar of Wakefield.” He is probably best known in Ireland for his poem “The Deserted Village”, which expresses the fear that the destruction of villages for the benefit of the nobility will ruin the peasantry. Although this poem has been praised in Ireland as an anti-English work, it is now thought that the village in which he is actually based in England Goldsmith was known for his extreme envy of other writers, including Dr. Johnson.

George Bernard Shaw 1856 – 1950

Shaw was born in Dublin and worked in an office until he moved to London. He discovered socialism and joined the Fabian Society. He began writing plays soon after and had early successes with ‘Arms and the Man,’ ‘Candida,’ ‘The Devil’s Disciple,’ ‘Man and Superman,’ ‘Major Barbara,’ ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma,’ and several others. His most famous play ‘Pygmalion’ was later turned into the popular musical ‘My Fair Lady’. As well as being a playwright, Shaw wrote extensively as a critic in the areas of Art, Literature and Music and also wrote numerous political treatises. He produced some poetry and novels that are less well known. He was a wit and storyteller and many of his aphorisms are regularly quoted. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.

Sean O’Casey 1880 – 1964

Although the son of middle-class Protestants, he became a militant nationalist and supporter of James Larkin and the Irish Citizen Army. He taught himself to read and write at the age of thirteen. He left school at the age of fourteen and worked at different jobs, including as a railway worker for nine years. He began writing around 1917 and produced a number of plays. His first play at The Abbey Theater was ‘The Shadow of a Gunslinger’ in 1923 and this was followed by his other great plays ‘Juno and the Paycock’ and ‘The Plow and the Stars’. His later play ‘The Silver Tassie’ was rejected by The Abbey, but he went on to write many other plays which were performed all over the world, including in London and New York. He also wrote a six volume autobiography.

William Butler Yeats 1865 – 1939

He founded the Irish Theater with Lady Gregory and it later became the Abbey Theatre, which remains the leading theater in Ireland. He was very involved in the nascent Irish nationalism and his works were often based on Irish legends. They include Countess Cathleen, The Land of Heart’s Desire, Cathleen N Houlihan and Deirdre. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923 mainly for his plays, but most of his poetry, for which he is most famous, came after him. His poetry collections include ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’, ‘The Tower’, ‘The Winding Stair and Other Poems’ and ‘Last Poems and Plays’. He is considered one of the most important poets who wrote in English in the 20th century.

Oscar Wilde 1854 – 1900

Wilde was educated in Dublin and Oxford and later moved to London, where he moved in fashionable social and cultural circles and became involved in the aesthetic movement. He became one of London’s most popular playwrights and his ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ is considered one of the best modern farces in English. His other works also include ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’, ‘Salom’, ‘A Woman of No Importance’ and ‘An Ideal Husband’. He wrote a novel ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’. He was jailed for two years after being found guilty of gross indecency with other men and produced the famous poem ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ about his time there. After his release he emigrated to Paris where he died at the age of 46.

James Joyce 1882 – 1941

Born in Dublin, the son of a well-to-do Catholic who later became destitute, he was educated at Clongowes, Belvedere College and Royal University, after which he went to Paris. In 1904, he began to write a fictional autobiography called ‘Stephen Hero’, which was later rewritten as ‘Portrait of the Artist when he was a Young Man’. In 1904 he met Nora Barnacle, who would later become his wife. Joyce’s major works include Ulysses, which is an epic set in Dublin on one day, June 16, 1904, and provides the date for Dublin’s annual Bloomsday celebrations. He had difficulty getting the book published, but it was eventually published by Sylvia Beach in Paris. It was banned in Ireland for many years. He then worked on his book ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ in which he experimented with language to the point of making it incomprehensible to most people. His ‘Dubliners’ collection of short stories includes ‘The Dead’, which was made into a film by John Huston. Joyce’s work has been the subject of scrutiny by many scholars and has been a major influence on numerous writers.

Samuel Beckett 1906 – 1989

He studied English, French and Italian at the University of Dublin (Trinity College), where he was also an accomplished cricketer. While at Trinity College, he was influenced by the writings of James Joyce and actually helped Joyce do research for Finnegans Wake. He published works of literary criticism beginning in 1929 and traveled throughout Europe and began writing fiction, including novels and poems. He settled in France at the beginning of World War II and became involved in the Resistance Movement. Beckett’s novel ‘Murphy’ had just been published and from then on he wrote mainly in French, often translating the works into English. His other major novels were ‘Molloy’, ‘Malone Dies’ and ‘The Unmentionable’, but today he is best known for his plays ‘Waiting for Godot’, ‘Endgame’ and ‘Happy Days’. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. His pioneering works have had a great influence on later writers. The Samuel Beckett Bridge, which opened in Dublin in 2009, is named after him.