Fitzmaurice, George (1877–1963)

Irish playwright for the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, whose peasant and folk plays often blend the realistic and the fantastical. The naturalistic play The Country Dressmaker (1907) was his first and most famous drama. This was followed by The Pie-Dish (1908), a Faustian tale in which an old man sells his soul to the devil to be able to complete an ornamental dish he is making. Later plays include The Magic Glasses (1913) and 'Twixt the Giltinans and the Carmodys (1923).

A lot of his plays were ahead of their time, and the audiences often did not quite know how to react to them. Very sensitive to criticism, Fitzmaurice withdrew his plays from the Abbey after 1923, but he continued to publish material in The Dublin Magazine.

Fitzmaurice was born near Listowel, County Kerry, Republic of Ireland, and was a clerk in the civil service for most of his life, working for the Irish Land Commission, and served in the British army during World War I.