Frank O'Connor

Frank O'Connor (born Michael Francis O'Donovan; 17 September 1903 – 10 March 1966) was an Irish author and translator.

He wrote poetry (original and translations from Irish), dramatic works, memoirs, journalistic columns and features on aspects of Irish culture and history, criticism, long and short fiction (novels and short stories), biography, and travel books.

He is most widely known for his more than 150 short stories and for his memoirs.

The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award was named in his honour.

Raised in Cork, he was the only child of Minnie (née O'Connor) and Michael O'Donovan.

He attended Saint Patrick’s School on Gardiner's Hill.

One teacher, Daniel Corkery, introduced O'Connor's class to the Irish language and poetry and deeply influenced the young pupil.

He later attended North Monastery Christian Brothers School.

O'Connor's early life was marked by his father's alcoholism, debt, and ill-treatment of his mother.

His childhood was strongly shaped by his mother, who supplied much of the family's income by cleaning houses, his father being unable to keep steady employment due to alcoholism.

O'Connor adored his mother and was bitterly resentful of his father.

In his memoirs, he recalled his childhood as "those terrible years", and admitted that he had never been able to forgive his father for his abuse of himself and his mother.

When his mother was seventy, O'Connor was horrified to learn from his own doctor that she had suffered for years from chronic appendicitis, which she had endured with great stoicism, as she had never had the time nor the money to see a doctor.

In 1918 O'Connor joined the First Brigade of the Irish Republican Army and served in combat during the Irish War of Independence.

He opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and joined the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War, working in a small propaganda unit in Cork City.

He was one of twelve thousand Anti-Treaty combatants who were interned by the government of the new Irish Free State.

In February 1923, O'Connor was imprisoned in Cork City Gaol and in April moved to Gormanston, County Meath where he was held until just before Christmas.

In December 1928, he moved to Dublin to take up the position of librarian at the Pembroke District Library.

War is a major theme in most stories of O'Connor's first published collection, Guests of the Nation, 1931.

Following his release from Gormanston, O'Connor took various positions including that of teacher of Irish and theatre director.

Thanks to his continuing connection with Corkery, he was introduced to Lennox Robinson, then the secretary for the Carnegie Trust.

Robinson was organizing rural libraries and engaged O'Connor as a trainee.

O'Connor worked first in Sligo and later under Geoffrey Phibbs in Wicklow.

Through Phibbs, he met and was befriended by George William Russell (Æ), who requested O'Connor to send him material for publication.

Russell introduced O'Connor to most of the well-known Irish writers of the day, including W. B. Yeats, F. R. Higgins and Augusta Gregory.

In his memoirs, he paid tribute to both Yeats and Russell for the help and encouragement they gave him.

In 1935, O'Connor became a member of the board of directors of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, founded by Yeats and other members of the Irish National Theatre Society.

In 1937, he became managing director of the Abbey.

Following Yeats's death in 1939, O'Connor's long-standing conflict with other board members came to a head and he left the Abbey later that year.

In 1939 O'Connor married Evelyn Bowen (who had previously been married to the actor Robert Speaight): they had two sons and a daughter.

In 1950, he accepted invitations to teach in the United States, where many of his short stories had been published in The New Yorker and won great acclaim.

He spent much of the 1950s in the United States, although it was always his intention to return eventually to Ireland.

They were divorced in 1953.

O'Connor married, secondly, Harriet Rich of Baltimore, whom he met while lecturing at Northwestern University.

They had one daughter.

Between his marriages to Bowen and Rich, he was romantically involved with Joan Knape, with whom he had a son, Oliver O'Donovan.

O'Connor was perhaps best known for his varied and comprehensive short stories but also for his work as a literary critic, essayist, travel writer, translator and biographer.

He was also a novelist, poet and dramatist.

O'Connor had a stroke while teaching at Stanford University in 1961, and he later died from a heart attack in Dublin, Ireland on 10 March 1966.

He was buried in Deans Grange Cemetery on 12 March 1966.