Life
1935-1979 [James Gordon Farrell]; b. England, of Anglo-Irish family associated
with Sligo, as well as Cork and Portlaoise (on the maternal side); played
cricket and rugby and captained prep-school teams; brought up in Dalkey
from 1947, travelling to England for school; gave his attention to rugby
at Oxford; struck by polio, 1956 and suffered its effects thereafter;
spent two years teaching English in France, while working in novel A
Man from Elsewhere (1963); issued A Girl in the Head (1067)
and The Lung (1965), winning the Harnes Fellowship on the strength
of which he travelled to Cuernavaca; issued Troubles (1970),
set in Co. Wexford at the 300-room Majestic hotel, run by Edward Spencer, where Major Major Brendan Archer comes to stay, recovering from war-wounds; winner of Booker prize in competition with Iris
Murdoch, and in turn the inspiration of a poem by Derek Mahon (“A
Disused Shed in Co. Wexford”); travelled to India and Nepal; issued
Siege of Krishnapur (1973), winner of Booker Award and first of
his ‘Empire’ trilogy; more Eastern travel followed; suffered deterioration
of health; issued Singapore Grip (1978); moved to West Cork, 1980;
drowned 11 Aug.1980; bur. at Durrus,
Co. Cork; The Hill on the Station issued posthumously by John Spurling
(1981); MSS notes held in TCD Library; Farrell was reknowned for his independence
in dealing with publishers and agents. FDA
Works
A Man From Elsewhere [New Authors Ltd., No. 40] (London: Hutchinson 1963), 190pp.; The Lung
(London: Hutchinson 1965), 207pp.; A Girl In The Head (London: Cape 1967), 223pp., Do. [rep. edn.] (London: Pan Books 1969), 203pp., and Do. [rep. edn.] (London: Fontana 1981), 221pp.; Troubles (London: Jonathan Cape 1970), 446pp., and Do. (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1975), 411pp., and Do. (pb. edns. incl. Flamingo 1983, 1984, 1986, Phoenix 1993]; The Siege of Krishnapur (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1973), 344pp., and Do. (Glasgow: Fontana/Flamingo 1987; London: Orion 1997), 314pp.; The Singapore Grip
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1978), 558pp., and Do. [num pb. edns. in 1980, 1984, 1985], and Do. (London: Phoenix 1992), 601pp.; John Spurling, ed., The Hill Station
: An Unfinished Novel and an Indian Diary (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
1981; Flamingo 1987), 254pp., and Do. [prep. edn.] (London: Phoenix 1997), 256pp.
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Criticism
John Riddy, The Siege of Krishnapur [York Notes] (Harlow: Longman 1985), 71pp.
Ronald Binns, J. G. Farrell [Contemporary writers] (London: Methuen 1986), [96]pp.
Ralph Carne & Jennifer Levitt, Troubled Pleasures: The Fiction of J. G. Farrell (Dublin: Four Courts Press 1997), 173pp.
Lavinia Greacen, J. G. Farrell: The Making of a Writer (London: Bloomsbury 2000), 448pp., 16pp. ills.
Ralph E. Crane, ed., J. G. Farrell: The Critical Grip (Dublin: Four Courts Press 1998), 208pp.
Valentine Cunningham, ‘Good Pig’, The Listener, 30 Aug. 1973 [q.pp.].
Derek Mahon, [feature-article on Farrell], Vogue (25 June 1976) [q.pp.; chk date].
Jeremy Brooks, ‘Historical Novels: The Yarn of Humanity’, The Sunday Times, 17 Sept. 1978 [q.pp.].
Francis King, ‘The Loner Who Loved Company’, Sunday Telegraph (19 Aug. 1979), p.14.
Derek Mahon, ‘J. G. Farrell, 1935-1979’ [obituary], in The New Statesman (31 Aug. 1979), p.313.
Francis King, ‘The Loner who Loved Company’, Sunday Telegraph (19 Aug. 1979), p.14.
John Spurling, ‘Jim Farrell: A Memoir’, The Times (11 April 1981), p.6.
Nicholas Shrimpton, ‘Talent for Thought’, New Statesman (24 April 1981) [q.pp.].
Laurence Bristow-Smith, ‘Tomorrow is Another Day: The Essential J. G. Farrell’, Critical Quarterly, 25 (1983) [q.pp.].
Margaret Scanlan, ‘Rumours of War: Elizabeth Bowen’s Last September and J. G. Farrell’s Troubles’, in Éire-Ireland (Fall 1985), pp.43-55.
Ronald Binns, ‘Chronicler of the Thin Red Line’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 709 (1986) [q.pp.].
A. V. Krishna, ‘History and the Art of Fiction: J. G. Farrell’s Example: The Siege of Krishnapur’, in Literary Criteria, 23 (1988) [q.pp.].
Fiona MacPhail, ‘Major and Majestic, J. G. Farrell’s Troubles’, in Jacqueline Genet, ed., The Big House in Ireland (Dingle: Brandon; NY: Barnes & Noble 1991), pp.243-52.
Lars Harveitt, ‘The Imprint of Recorded Events in the Narrative Form of J. G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur’, English Studies, 74 (Oct. 1993) [q.pp.].
Malcolm Dean, ‘A Personal Memoir’, in The Hill Station [rep. edn. (London: Phoenix 1993) [q.pp.].
Bridget O’Toole, ‘Not a Crumb, Not a Wrinkle: J. G. Farrell at Work’, in Irish Studies Review (Autumn 1995), pp.27-30.
Ralph J. Crane & Jennifer Livett, eds., Troubled Pleasures: The Fiction of J. G. Farrell (Dublin: Four Courts 1997), 173pp. [1 chap./1 novel].
Bernard Bergonzi, ‘Fictions of History’, in The Situation of the Novel [2nd edn.] (London: Macmillan 1979), pp.214-37).
Frederic Jameson, ‘Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, New Left Review, 146 (1984), pp.53-92.
Frederic Jameson, ‘Third world Literature in the era of multi-national capitalism’, Social Texts, 15 (1986), pp.65-88.
Victoria Humphreys, ‘J. G. Farrell’s Use of History in Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur, The Singapore Grip, and The Hill Station’ (BA. Diss., UUC 1996) [numerous bibl. citations supra from this source.]
J. McArdle, review of Lavina Greacen, J. G. Farrell: the
Making of a Writer (Bloomsbury), in Books Ireland (April 2000), p.110-111.
Mary Whipple, review of The Siege of Krishnapur, in Desi Journal [online]
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Notes
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology, Derry: Field
Day 1991, Vol. 3, 548 [hijack episode, as infra]; 611 [cited with Henry
Green as ‘two remarkable examples’ of English writers responding
to the ‘power’ of the big house tradition in fiction]; 1383
[ded. of Derek Mahon’s poem “A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford”;
no ftn. supplied].
An account of the hijacking of cars in Troubles originates
in an incident independently described by Hubert Butler in Escape from
the Anthill (1985), Chap. 9 - and expressly identified with Farrell’s
novel by Butler (see Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology, 1991,
Vol. 3, p.548.) Note also that the architecture of the Majestic Hotel was inspired by a house that Farrell actually visited on Block
Island, New Hampshire.
Michael Joyce, Ordeal at Lucknow ; the defence of the Residency (London: J. Murray [1938]), ix, 396pp. [maps, plan.] 21 cm.
In The Siege of Krishnapur it is the electroplated heads of the great thinkers of Europe in the Residency that make the best missiles when ordinary shot runs out for the British cannons.
University of Ulster Library holds E. Dermott, ‘Study of the Big House Novel’ Dissertation on Molly Keane, Elizabeth Bowen, J. G. Farrell, and Jennifer Johnson.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)