Liam O'Flaherty facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Liam O'Flaherty
Born	(1896-08-28)28 August 1896 Inishmore, Ireland
Died	7 September 1984(1984-09-07) (aged 88) Dublin, Ireland
Occupation	Author
Literary movement	Irish Renaissance
Spouse	Margaret Barrington
Partner	Kitty Tailer
Children	Pegeen, Joyce
Relatives	Tom O'Flaherty, his brother Breandán Ó hEithir, his nephew John Ford, his cousin

Liam O'Flaherty (Irish: Liam Ó Flaithearta) was an important Irish writer. He was born on August 28, 1896, and passed away on September 7, 1984. He was known for writing novels and short stories. He often wrote about the lives and experiences of ordinary people, especially those who were struggling. He was also a strong believer in social justice and fairness for everyone.

Liam O'Flaherty fought as a soldier in the British army during World War I. He was badly injured in 1917. After the war, he became involved in politics and helped start the first Communist Party of Ireland. His brother, Tom Maidhc O'Flaherty, was also a writer and interested in similar ideas. Liam grew up speaking Irish, but he wrote most of his books in English. He did write some short stories, a play, and poems in Irish.

Liam O'Flaherty's Early Life

East beach of Inishmore, O'Flaherty's birthplace

Liam O'Flaherty was born on Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands off the coast of Ireland. His family was not wealthy. He was christened William, but later started using the name 'Liam' in the 1920s. In his home, both English and Irish were spoken. However, his father did not approve of speaking Irish. Liam said that when he was seven, he insisted that everyone in the house speak Irish.

In primary school, Liam and his brother Tom had a teacher named David O'Callaghan. This teacher greatly influenced them. Mr. O'Callaghan taught his students in Irish, which was unusual for the time. He also taught the O'Flaherty brothers how to write in Irish. He helped them develop a strong sense of Irish pride and a desire for Ireland to be independent.

Liam O'Flaherty was the uncle of Breandán Ó hEithir, who became a famous sports commentator and writer.

When Liam was twelve, in 1908, he went to Rockwell College in County Tipperary. At sixteen, he won a gold medal for something he wrote in Irish. After a disagreement with the college, he moved to Blackrock College in Dublin in 1913. There, he tried to start a group of Irish Volunteers, who were people who wanted Ireland to be independent. He also studied at other colleges, including University College Dublin, where he again tried to form a Volunteer group.

Soldier and Activist

In 1916, Liam joined the British Army. He used his mother's last name, 'William Ganly'. He served on the Western Front during World War I. Life in the trenches was very difficult for him. He was seriously injured in September 1917 during the Battle of Langemarck. He was discharged from the army in May 1918. The severe stress from the war, known as shell shock, affected his mental health throughout his life.

After returning from the war, Liam became a strong supporter of socialist ideas, which focus on equality and fairness for all people. He traveled a lot, visiting places like North and South America, including Cuba, and parts of Europe. He joined workers' rights groups in Canada and the United States. He returned to Ireland in late 1921.

Liam had been interested in ideas about social equality since he was a schoolboy. In his twenties, he became an atheist and a communist, believing in a society where everyone shares resources. In 1921, he helped start the first Communist Party of Ireland. He also edited their newspaper, the Workers' Republic. In 1922, Liam O'Flaherty, along with other unemployed workers in Dublin, took over the Rotunda Concert Hall. They held it for four days to protest against the government's lack of action. They flew a red flag, which is a symbol of workers' movements. Soldiers from the new Irish Free State forced them to give up the building. Liam then went to Cork, but returned to Dublin to take part in the Battle of Dublin, fighting against the Irish Free State.

Liam O'Flaherty's Writing Career

After the Battle of Dublin, Liam O'Flaherty left Ireland in July 1922 and moved to London. He was poor and jobless, so he started writing. In 1923, when he was 27, he published his first short story, The Sniper. He also published his first novel, Thy Neighbour's Wife. In London, he became friends with Carl Lahr, a German socialist who ran a bookshop. This group of friends included many progressive writers. Lahr and his wife helped O'Flaherty and published some of his early works. He also caught the attention of Edward Garnett, a main editor at a publishing company, who encouraged many Irish writers.

Back in Dublin in 1924, O'Flaherty helped start the Radical Club. This club included many artists and writers, like his friend Pádraic Ó Conaire, who was also a socialist and wrote in Irish. In 1925, O'Flaherty became very successful with his novel The Informer. This book was about a rebel during the Irish War of Independence. It won him a major award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.

In 1925, he also met Margaret Barrington, a writer whom he later married. They had a daughter named Pegeen in 1926, but they divorced in 1932. O'Flaherty also had another daughter, Joyce, with Nellie Cohen.

Many of O'Flaherty's works from the 1920s were influenced by a style called Expressionism. This art style often showed strong feelings and was against imperialism. O'Flaherty's only play in Irish, Dorchadas/Darkness, was written in 1925 and performed in 1926. Other Expressionist works include Mr Gilhooley (1926) and The Assassin (1928), which was based on a real event where an Irish government minister was killed. His novel The House of Gold (1929) was the first of his five novels to be banned in Ireland. His anti-war novel Return of the Brute (1929) was set in the trenches of World War I. The strict rules about books in Ireland in the 1920s, which led to many books being banned, inspired his funny political book A Tourist’s Guide To Ireland (1929).

O'Flaherty left Ireland again in 1930 and traveled to the USSR (Soviet Union). His books were translated into Russian more than any other Irish author's during the 1920s. He wrote a book called I Went to Russia (1931), which was a satire. He later said that the book was misunderstood and that he still believed in the USSR's goals.

In 1934, O'Flaherty spent about a year in the United States, mostly in Hollywood. This was when his relative John Ford made a famous film based on O'Flaherty's 1925 novel, The Informer. The novel had also been made into a film in 1929. Many of O'Flaherty's novels were written in a way that made them easy to turn into movies.

In California, O'Flaherty met his future partner, Kitty Tailer. He wrote a sarcastic book about his time in Hollywood called Hollywood Cemetery (1935). He also worked on films based on his novels Mr Gilhooly and The Puritan. His autobiography, Shame the Devil, came out in 1934. In 1937, he published Famine, which was an important book about the Irish Famine from the perspective of the people who lived through it.

By 1940, he was living in the United States with Kitty Tailer. They returned to Ireland in 1952. Most of O'Flaherty's writing happened between 1923 and 1937, when he was between 27 and 41 years old. During this time, he wrote 14 of his 16 novels, many short stories, a play, and some non-fiction books.

Writing in the Irish Language

Besides his play Dorchadas and some poems, O'Flaherty was also a talented short story writer in Irish. His collection Dúil, published in 1953, contained 18 short stories in Irish. Some of these stories were similar to ones he had already published in English. It's thought that some stories might have been written in Irish first, then translated into English for publication, and finally published in their original Irish form in Dúil. For example, Díoltas became The Pedlar's Revenge.

The collection Dúil was not well received at first. This may have discouraged him from writing a novel in Irish that he had planned. Years later, he wrote a letter saying he felt mixed feelings about his Irish language work. He also mentioned other Irish writers who didn't get much praise for their work in Irish.

In 1927, O'Flaherty wrote a letter about his Irish writing. He said he wrote some short stories for an Irish language group, and they printed them. He and another writer, Pádraic Ó Conaire, thought that plays would be the best way to start new Irish literature. They suggested a traveling theater, and O'Flaherty promised to write ten plays. However, the people they spoke to didn't seem interested and thought they were "immoral persons." Soon after, the editor of an Irish language magazine told O'Flaherty that his writings were no longer welcome. O'Flaherty was upset, but his friend Pádraic was even more so.

Despite this, O'Flaherty wrote the play Dorchadas. It was performed in 1926, shortly after another famous play, The Plough and the Stars, was shown at the same theater. O'Flaherty said his play was "packed" with people, which was rare for Irish plays, and also with detectives. The play was first printed in English in a magazine in 1926.

In 2020, Mícheál Ó Conghaile translated thirty of O'Flaherty's English short stories into Irish. A famous Irish writer, Seán Ó Ríordáin, once said about O'Flaherty's Irish writing: "If you held a robin and felt it quiver in your hands you would know what I felt reading O’Flaherty’s Irish." This means his writing felt very alive and real.

Books Banned in Ireland

In 1929, a new law was passed in Ireland called the Censorship of Publications Act. This law created a board to review books and magazines. If they found a publication to be "obscene" (meaning it contained things considered inappropriate), they could ban it. This made it illegal to buy, sell, or share that publication in Ireland.

The very first book banned by this board was Liam O'Flaherty's novel The House of Gold. This book criticized certain powerful people in the new Irish Free State. Other books by O'Flaherty that were banned included The Puritan (1932), The Martyr (1933), Shame the Devil (1934), and Hollywood Cemetery (1937). All of O'Flaherty's novels were first printed outside Ireland.

It wasn't until 1974, when a publishing house called Wolfhound Press was started by Seamus Cashman, that many of O'Flaherty's books were finally printed in Ireland. Wolfhound Press republished many of his novels and short story collections throughout the 1970s and 1980s. More recently, a publisher called Nuascéalta has reprinted some of his novels that had not been available since they were banned, such as The House of Gold (2013), Hollywood Cemetery (2019), and The Martyr (2020).

Later Years

Liam O'Flaherty's last novel, Insurrection, was published in 1950. It was about the Easter Rising, a rebellion in Ireland. Even though he hated war, O'Flaherty showed in this novel that sometimes fighting for a good reason, like freedom, can be necessary. His last short story was published in 1958.

Liam O'Flaherty passed away on September 7, 1984, in Dublin, when he was 88 years old. His ashes were scattered on the cliffs of his home island, Inishmore.

Liam O'Flaherty's Works

Novels

• Thy Neighbour's Wife (1923)
• The Black Soul (1924)
• The Informer (1925)
  • This book was made into a film twice: The Informer (1929 film) and The Informer (1935 film).
• Mr. Gilhooley (1926)
• The Wilderness (1927)
• The Assassin (1928)
• Return of the Brute (1929)
• The House of Gold (1929) - This was the first novel banned by the Irish Free State.
• The Ecstasy of Angus (1931)
• The Puritan (1932)
• Skerrett (1932)
• Famine (1937)
• Land (1946)
• Insurrection (1950)

Political and Social Satire

• A Tourist's Guide To Ireland (1929) - A funny book about politics.
• I Went to Russia (1931) - A satirical look at the Soviet Union.
• The Martyr (1933) - This book was banned.
• Hollywood Cemetery (1935) - This book was also banned.

Short Stories and Collections

Liam O'Flaherty wrote a total of 183 short stories. Many of these were published in various magazines and journals. Some of his original collections include:

• Spring Sowing
• The Tent
• The Mountain Tavern
• Two Lovely Beasts and Other Stories (1950)
• Dúil (1953) - A collection of stories in Irish.
• The Pedlar's Revenge and Other Short Stories (1976)

His most famous short story is The Sniper. Other well-known stories include Civil War, The Shilling, Going into Exile, and His First Flight – which is about being nervous before trying something new.

Theatre

• Dorchadas/ Darkness (1926) - This play was performed in Irish.

Books for Children

• The Fairy Goose and Two Other Stories (1927)
• The Wild Swan and Other Stories (1932)
• All Things Come of Age: A Rabbit Story (included in The Pedlar's Revenge and Other Stories)
• The Test of Courage (included in The Pedlar's Revenge and Other Stories)

Non-fiction

• Life of Tim Healy (1927) - A biography.
• Two Years (1930) - His memoirs (stories from his own life).
• A Cure for Unemployment (1931)
• Shame The Devil (1934) - More memoirs.
• The Letters of Liam O'Flaherty (1996) - Published after he died.