Padraic Colum
Padraic Colum | |
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![]() Photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1959. | |
Born | Patrick Columb 8 December 1881 Columcille, County Longford, Ireland |
Died | 11 January 1972 Enfield, Connecticut, United States | (aged 90)
Nationality | Irish |
Alma mater | University College Dublin |
Period | 1902–58 |
Notable works | The Saxon Shillin, The King of Ireland's Son |
Spouse | Mary Maguire |
Padraic Colum (8 December 1881 – 11 January 1972) was an Irish poet, novelist, dramatist, biographer, playwright, children's author and collector of folklore. He was one of the leading figures of the Irish Literary Revival.
Early life
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Colum was born Patrick Columb in a County Longford workhouse, where his father worked. He was the first of eight children born to Patrick and Susan Columb.[1]
When the father lost his job in 1889, he moved to the United States to participate in the
When Susan Columb died in 1897,[3] the family was temporarily split up. Padraic (as he would be known) and one brother remained in Dublin, while their father and remaining children moved back to Longford. Colum finished school the following year and at the age of seventeen, he passed an exam for and was awarded a clerkship in the Irish Railway Clearing House. He stayed in this job until 1903.[citation needed]
During this period, Colum started to write and met a number of the leading Irish writers of the time, including
He was awarded a five-year scholarship by a wealthy American benefactor, Thomas Hughes Kelly.[5]
Early poetry and plays
He was awarded a prize by Cumann na nGaedheal for his anti-enlistment play, The Saxon Shillin'. Through his plays he became involved with the National Theatre Society and became involved in the founding of the Abbey Theatre, writing several of its early productions. His first play, Broken Soil (revised as The Fiddler's House) (1903) was performed by W. G. Fay's Irish National Dramatic Company.[6] The Land (1905), was one of that theatre's first great public successes. He wrote another important play for the Abbey named Thomas Muskerry (1910).[citation needed]
His earliest published poems appeared in The United Irishman, a paper edited by
He collected Irish folk songs, and adapted some of them. In a letter to the
In 1911, with
In 1912 he married Maguire. Padraic taught at
Later life and work
In America, Colum took up children's writing and published a number of collections of stories for children, beginning with
He contributed to Emma Goldman's Mother Earth.[12][13]
In 1922 he was commissioned to write versions of Hawaiian folklore for young people. This resulted in the publication of three volumes of his versions of tales from the islands. A first edition of the first volume (At the Gateways of the Day) was presented to US president Barack Obama by Taoiseach Enda Kenny on the occasion of his visit to Dublin, Ireland on 23 May 2011.[14] Colum also started writing novels. These include Castle Conquer (1923) and The Flying Swans (1937). The Colums spent the years from 1930 to 1933 living in Paris and Nice, where Padraic renewed his friendship with James Joyce and became involved in the transcription of Finnegans Wake.
After their time in France, the couple moved to New York City, where they did some teaching at
While in New York, he wrote the screenplay for the 1954 stop-motion animated film Hansel and Gretel. It was his only screenplay.[15]
Mary died in 1957 and Padraic finished Our Friend James Joyce, which they had worked on together. It was published in 1958. Colum divided his later years between the United States and Ireland. In 1961 the Catholic Library Association awarded him the Regina Medal. He died in Enfield, Connecticut, age 90, and was buried in St. Fintan's Cemetery, Sutton.
In 1965, Colum sold the notebooks, manuscripts, galley proofs, and letters that were in his apartments in New York and Dublin to the Binghamton University Libraries. He wished to make whatever resources he could available to scholars of Irish literature and history.[16]
Asked how to say his name, he told The
Selected works
- (1902) The Saxon Shillin' (Play)
- (1903) Broken Sail (Play)
- (1905) The Land (Play)
- (1907) Wild Earth (Book)
- (1907) The Fiddlers' House (Play)
- (1910) Thomas Muskerry (Play)
- (1912) My Irish Year (Book)
- (1916) The King of Ireland's Son (New Sample of old Irish Tales)
- (1917) Mogu the Wanderer (Play)
- (1918) The Children's Homer,ISBN 978-0-02-042520-5
- (1918) The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said
- (1920) The Boy Apprenticed to an Enchanter,[19] (Novel) The Macmillan Company
- (1920) Children of Odin: Nordic Gods and Heroes
- (1921) The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles,[20] (Novel), Ill. by Willy Pogany The Macmillan company[21]
- (1923) The Six Who Were Left in a Shoe (Children's Story)
- (1923) Castle Conquer (Novel)
- (1924) The Island of the Mighty: Being the Hero Stories of Celtic Britain Retold from the Mabinogion, Ill. by Wilfred Jones, The Macmillan Company
- (1924) At the Gateways of the Day (Tales and legends of Hawaii)
- (1924) The Peep-Show Man, The Macmillan Company
- (1925) The Bright Islands (Tales and legends of Hawaii V2)
- (1929) Balloon (Play)
- (1929) The Girl who Sat by the Ashes
- (1930) Old Pastures
- (1932) Poems (collected) Macmillan & Co
- (1933) Jack Yeats
- (1937) Legends of Hawaii
- (1937) The Story of Lowry Maen (Epic Poem)
- (1943) The Frenzied Prince (Compilation of Irish Tales)
- (1957) The Flying Swans (Novel)
- (1958) Our Friend James Joyce (Memoir) (With Mary Colum)
- (1963) Moytura: A Play for Dancers[22] (Play)
- (1965) Padraic Colum Reading His Irish Tales and Poems (Album, Folkways Records)
As screenwriter:
- (1954) Hansel and Gretel
As editor:
- (1922) Anthology of Irish Verse Liveright, 1948; Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4374-8759-6 [23]
- (1923) The Arabian Nights: Tales of Wonder and Magnificence; The Macmillan Company
- (1954) A Treasury of Irish Folklore: The Stories, Traditions, Legends, Humor, Wisdom, Ballads, and Songs of the Irish People; Crown Publishers
- (1964) Roofs of Gold: Poems to Read Aloud, The Macmillan Company
Notes
- ^ "Biodata". Poemhunter.com. Archived from the original on 1 July 2012. Retrieved 30 April 2012.
- ISBN 9780815602026.
- ^ Zack Bowen, Padraic Colum: A Biographical-Critical Introduction, pg.4
- ^ "Synge's opening night to remember". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 22 February 2017. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
- ^ "Boston College Libraries Newsletter - Spring 2014". Archived from the original on 8 May 2016. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
- ^ Fay: The Fays of the Abbey Theatre (1935), pg. 114.
- ^ Colum, Padraic. "She Moved Through the Fair" (letter), The Irish Times, 22 April 1970.
- ^ Ó Conluain, Proinsias. "She Moved Through the Fair" (letter), The Irish Times, 2 April 1970.
- ^ @Limerick1914 in Art, Education, Politics, Religion, Spotlight (16 October 2014). "Spotlight: Padraic Colum's thoughts on Pearse and MacDonagh (1916)". History is what we choose to remember Researching Limerick 100 years ago, Slavery, Memory, Power. Archived from the original on 8 February 2017. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - )
- ISBN 0-8156-2374-7
- ^ O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, Nelson (2021). Bernard Shaw, Sean O'Casey, and the Dead James Connolly. Springer. p. 77.
- ^ "'Red Easter'". History Ireland. 30 August 2016.
sporadically contributing poems to Emma Goldman's anarchist journal, Mother Earth
- ^ "Obama gets a poetic aloha". irishtimes.com. The Irish Times. 28 May 2011. Archived from the original on 14 August 2016. Retrieved 7 July 2016.
- ^ "Padraic Colum". IMDb. Archived from the original on 7 November 2020. Retrieved 25 September 2019.
- ^ "The Padraic and Mary Colum Collection, 1890-1997 | Binghamton University Libraries". Archived from the original on 9 March 2017. Retrieved 28 April 2020.
- ^ Charles Earle Funk, What's the Name, Please?, Funk & Wagnalls, 1936.
- ISBN 9780020425205. Retrieved 30 April 2012.
- ^ Colum, Padraic (1920). The Boy Apprenticed to an Enchanter – Padraic Colum – Google Boeken. Archived from the original on 7 February 2022. Retrieved 30 April 2012.
- ^ The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles – Padraic Colum –. MacMillan. 1921. Retrieved 30 April 2012 – via Internet Archive.
Padraic Colum.
- ^ "Padraic Colum 1922. The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived before Achilles". Bartleby.com. Archived from the original on 28 April 2012. Retrieved 30 April 2012.
- ISBN 9781135438500. Archivedfrom the original on 7 February 2022. Retrieved 7 September 2017. Retrieved on 25 June 2015.
- ^ "Colum, Padraic, ed. 1922. Anthology of Irish Verse". Bartleby.com. Archived from the original on 11 May 2012. Retrieved 30 April 2012.
References
- Bowen, Zack. Padraic Colum. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970.
- Denson, Alan. "Padraic Colum: An Appreciation with a Checklist of His Publications." The Dublin Magazine 6 (Spring 1967): 50–67.
- Sternlicht, Sanford. Padraic Colum. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985.
- Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. p. 82.
- Igoe, Vivien. A Literary Guide to Dublin. ISBN 0-413-69120-9
Online
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg/38px-Wikisource-logo.svg.png)
- Works by Padraic Colum at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Padraic Colum at Internet Archive
- Works by Padraic Colum at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Padraic Colum at Library of Congress, with 142 library catalogue records
- Padraic Colum at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Works by Padraic Colum at The Online Books Page
- Padraic and Mary Colum Collection at Binghamton University
- Padraic Colum Collection at Dublin City University
- Padraic Colum Collection at the Harry Ransom Center
- Padraic Colum Collection at the University of Delaware
- Padraic Colum Plays Collection at the University of Pennsylvania
- Padraic Colum Reading His Irish Tales and Poems Album Details at Smithsonian Folkways