O'Duffy, Eimar (Ultan) (1893–1935)

Irish satirical playwright and novelist. Born in Dublin, he was educated at Stonyhurst (Jesuit) College, Lancashire, and University College, Dublin. Influenced by the Irish poet Thomas MacDonagh, he embraced Irish cultural and political nationalism, joining the Irish Volunteers. However, during the 1916 Easter Rising he obeyed Volunteer leader John (Eoin) MacNeill's countermand of the insurrection. His subsequent work took a more sceptical view of revolutionary nationalism. The play Bricriu's Feast (1919) satirized neo-Gaelicism, and his first novel, The Wasted Island (1919), examined critically the origins of the rising.

O'Duffy's first play, The Walls of Athens, was published and produced by Edward Martyn's Irish Theatre; he also staged O'Duffy's The Phoenix on the Roof (1915).

A perceptive literary critic, O'Duffy was one of the first to recognize as a masterpiece James Joyce's Ulysses (1922). He emigrated to England in 1925, and his autobiography Life and Money appeared in 1932.