Ó Faoláin, Seán (1900–1991)

Irish novelist, short-story writer, critic, and biographer. Born in Cork city, he was educated at the National University of Ireland and Harvard University. His first collection was Midsummer Night Madness and Other Stories (1932), after which he wrote A Nest of Simple Folk (1933), his first novel. He also wrote biographies of Daniel O'Connell in 1938; Éamon de Valera, beside whom he had fought in the IRA, in 1939; and Cardinal Newman in 1952. He founded the influential Irish literary journal The Bell in 1940, editing it until 1946. His Collected Short Stories was published 1980–82.

The Bell was influential not only because it published many significant writers such as Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh, and Frank O'Connor, but also because the commentaries by Ó Faoláin and others challenged predominant notions of Irish identity as well as contemporary censorship policy.

Ó Faoláin fought on the Republican side in the Irish Civil War (1922–23) and he was also director of publicity for the IRA. He lectured at Boston College in 1929, before taking up teaching in Middlesex, England, 1930–33. After this he returned to County Wicklow, Ireland, where he devoted himself to writing.

Other volumes of his stories are A Purse of Coppers (1937), The Stories of Seán Ó Faoláin (1958), The Heat of the Sun (1966), and The Talking Trees (1971). His novels include Bird Alone (1936), Come Back to Erin (1940), and Teresa (1946). He edited the works of Thomas Moore in 1929 and an autobiography of Wolfe Tone in 1937. She Had To Do Something (1938) is a play; A Summer in Italy (1950) and South Sicily (1953) are travel books. Vive Moi! (1964) is an autobiography.