Life
1882-1925 [pseud. Michael Ireland]; b. Rathmines, Dublin, raised in India;
worked as tea broker in London and Calcutta, 1898-1910 [var. Ceylon];
publ. poems in A Vision of Life (1909), with a preface by G. K.
Chesterton, securing him a position as a reader for Dent, 1910-13 [var-1911],
and eventually an editor; wrote fiction incl. Broken Arcs (1911);
returned to Ireland, 1913; bought cottage on Achill Island; ed. volume
of stories of Carleton; free-lance journalist; his play, Queen Tara,
produced by F. R. Benson at the Abbey, 1913; involved with with Bulmer
Hobson in Howth gun-running, following meeting of 8 May 1914 at home of
A. S. Green in which he was instructed to buy arms in Germany for the
Irish Volunteers (‘Let us buy arms and so at least get into the problem’);
imprisoned in 1917 and 1919; Hon. Sec. Sinn Féin, 1917-19; issued
new novel, Jacob Elthorne (1914); also Children of Earth (1918),
about life on Aran; TD, Dáil Éireann, 1918; disliked
by Michael Collins; ed. The Republic, Jun-Sept. 1919; Sec. of Commission
of Inquiry into the Resources and Industries of Ireland, 1919-22; issued
The Economic Case for Irish Independence (1920), basing his arguments
heavily upon putative over-taxation; acting chairman of Free State Constitution
Committee; TD, Dublin, 1922; stood as independent candidate in S. Dublin,
but abandoned race when 3 Republicans invaded his flat in Dublin and shaved
off half his beard (reported in Evening Herald, 13 June 1922);
work include novels and studies of George Russell and William Carleton
[see infra]; House of Success (1922), about two generations of
a middle-class Irish family; The Return of the Hero (1923), on
Oisín and Patrick; appeared in Eimar O’Duffy’s The
Wasted Land (1919) as Ompleby. d. 1925. P. S. O’Hegarty prepared a bibliography in 1938. PI DIB DIW DIH
DIL IF1 IF2 OCIL FDA
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Works
Poetry, A Vision of Life, intro.
by G. K. Chesterton (London: John Lane 1909); The Crucible of Time
and Other Poems (London: John Lane 1911); Broken Arcs (London:
Dent 1911; NY&London: M Kennerly 1912); The Mount of Transfiguration
(Dublin: Maunsel 1915);
Drama, Queen Tara (London: Dent 1913);
Fiction [as Michael Ireland], Jacob Elthorne (Lon&Tor: Dent 1914); Children of Earth (Dublin: Maunsel 1918); House of Success (Gaelic Co-Operative Society 1921); The Return of the Hero (Lon&Sydney: Chapman & Dodd 1923), pseud. Michael Ireland; Do., (NY: C. Boni 1930) [as Figgis, with intro. by James Stephens and introduction by prob. Padraic Colum];
Miscellaneous, Shakespeare: A Study (London: Dent 1911; NY&London: M Kennerly 1912); Studies and Appreciations (London: Dent 1912); AE, A Study of A Man and A Nation (Dub&London: Maunsel 1916); A Chronicle of Jails (Dublin: Talbot 1917); The Gaelic State Past and Future (Dublin: Maunsel 1917), 64pp.; Bye-Ways of Study (Dublin: Talbot/London: Unwin 1918); A Second Chronicle of Jails (Dublin: Talbot 1919); The Historic Case for Irish Independence (Dub&London: Maunsel 1920); The Irish Constitution (Explained by Darreel Figgis) (Dublin: Mellifont [1922]); The Paintings of William Blake (London: E. Benn; NY: Scribner’s 1925), 100 pls.; Recollections of the Irish War (London: E. Benn 1927). Also, Introduction to The Foundation of Peace (Dublin: Maunsel 1920). Also Introduction to William Carleton, Stories of Irish Life (Talbot n.d. [1918]).
(QRY), poss. author of anonymous Ireland’s Brehon Laws [CTS n.d.], 32pp, pamphlet bound in Irish History and Archaeology collection.
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Criticism
Irish Book Lover, Vol. 11.
Peter Costello, The Heart Grown Brutal: The Irish Revolution in Literature from Parnell to the Death of W. B. Yeats, 1891-1939 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan; NJ: Rowman & Littlefield 1977), pp.98-101.
John J. Dunn, ‘An Almost Anonymous Author’, in Journal of Irish Literature, Vol XV, (Jan 1986), biographical essay but does not mention the broadcasting commission].
Dunn, ‘Darrell Figgis, a Man Nearly Anonymous’, in Journal of Irish Literature, 15, 1 (January 1986). pp.33-42.
Alexander G. Gonzalez, ‘The Achievement of Darrell Figgis’s Children of Earth: Realism and Folk Custom’, in Eire-Ireland, 22, 3 (Fall 1987), pp.129-43.
Paul Deane, ‘The Death of Greatness: Darrell Figgis’s Return of the Hero’, in Notes on Modern Irish Literature, 3 (1991), pp.30-36.
Alexander G. Gonzalez, ‘Darrell Figgis’s The House of Success: A Forgotten Historical Novel’, in Eire-Ireland, 26, 4 (Winter 1991), pp.118-25.
Gonzalez, ‘Darrell Figgis’s The House of Success, A Forgotten Historical Novel’, Éire-Ireland 26, 4 (Winter 1991), pp.118-25.
Gonzalez, Darrell Figgis: A Study of His Novels [Modern Irish Literature Monograph Series] (PA: Kopper 1992).
Maryann Felter, ‘Darrell Figgis: An Overview of His Work’, in Journal of Irish Literature, 22, 2 (May 1993), pp.3-24.
José Lanters, ‘Darrell Figgis, The Return of the Hero, and the Making of the Irish Nation’, in Colby Quarterly, 31, 3 (September 1995) pp.204-13.
See refs. in Gerald Griffin, The Dead March Past: A Semi-Autobiographical Saga. London: Macmillan 1937).
Ernest O’Malley, On Another Man’s Wound (Dublin & London: Maunsel 1936).
Edgar Holt, Protest in Arms: The Irish Troubles 1916-1923 (NY: Coward McCann 1960).
F. X. Martin, The Howth Gun-Running and the Kilcoole Gun-Running 1914 (Dublin: Browne & Nolan 1964).
Peter Costello, The Heart Grown Brutal: The Irish Revolution in Literature
from Parnell to the Death of Yeats, 1891-1939 (Gill & Macmillan
1977), pp.98-101.
Liam Kennedy, ‘The Union of Ireland and Britain, 1801-1921’, in Colonialism, Religion and Nationalism in Ireland (IIS/QUB 1996), pp.40-43.
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Notes
Dictionary of Irish History uses the word ‘mistress’
for his second alliance, and give no explicit account of the cause of
suicide; adds titles, AE, George Russell, A Study of a Man and a Nation
(1915); note var. The Economic Case for Irish Independence (1920);
The Irish Constitution Explained (1922).
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (1919), cites Children of the Earth (1918), set in Achill, therein called Maolan; IF2 adds Return of the Hero (1923); The House of Success (1921). BIBL, Shakespeare, A Study (Dent 1911) [Whelan Cat. 32]. DIL characterises his poetry as the work of a talentless AE; Queen Tara is set in Ruritania. IF2, Darrell Figgis is a character in Eimar O’Duffy’s The Wasted Island (1919; 1929).
Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (1991), Vol. 2, p.1012: Daniel Corkery writes [in Synge and Anglo-Irish Lit., 1931], ‘What wonder that those of them who most deeply sank themselves in their subject wrote far above their accustomed pitch? Darrel[l] Figgis with his Children of the Earth ...’.
(Maunsel list attached to St. John Ervine, Mrs Martin’s Man, Maunsel, 1915 pop. edn.), incl. notices of The Mount of Transfiguration, new vol. of poems by Darrell Figgis, author of Jacob Elthorn, A Study in Shakespeare, Queen Tara, &c.
The Irish Constitution (n.d.); The House of Success (Dublin 1921); Bye Ways of Study (Dublin 1918) [Cathach Bks 12]; Figgis, Introduction to William Carleton, Stories of Irish Life (Talbot n.d. [1918]) [Whelan Cat. 32]. with Maurice Moore, Report on Peat (Dublin Dec. 1921), 110pp., large folding map [Hyland Oct. 1995; Catl. 219].
Review of Daniel Corkery’s Munster Twilight by Darrell Figgis, in The Irish School Weekly, 26.12.1916. Adverts unfavourably to the open-endedness of the stories, and the refusal to shape the material to the demands of narrative. Includes a discussion of the relation between Anglo-Irish literature and writing in Irish, and offers an undogmatic definition of the former, ‘that is to say the use of the English language in books by Irishmen writing of their own affairs and from their national point of view.’ Figgis regards the stories of the collection other than the first, with its baroque splendour, as ‘mainly sketches glimpses and notes for stories.’ [Patrick Walsh, UUC Thesis, 1993, p.44]
Malcolm Brown cites Figgis as an ‘Irish poet’ who demonstrated that, in the comparison between Dublin and Warsaw for the worst slums in Europe, Dublin ‘got the worst of it’, with ftn. The Economic Case for Irish Independence (1920), pp.2-10; Brown adds, some pages later: ‘afterwards the practical benefits of Irish liberation proved to be less than overwhelming’, though ‘nobody has proposed that independence ought to be called off as a bad job’ [see Malcolm Brown, Politics of Irish Literature: From Thomas Davis to W. B. Yeats, 1972, p.3; 5-6].
See the account of Figgis’s part in the Howth gun-running given in George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (?1932; and rev. ed. 1972), Chp., ‘Bachelor’s Walk’, in which he cites Figgis’s own narrative, beginning with the meeting in Alice Stopford Green’s room in London overlooking the Thames, when Figgis exclaims, ‘Buy the guns, then, if only to be in on it’, and Casement replies, ‘Now that’s talking’, radiant with delight; Figgis organises the purchase of the guns, with Childers, from the Magnus Bros. in Hamburg (including dum-dum bullets off-loaded by the latter) and cleverly circumvents the inspection rulings at the harbour; gives the British steamer the slip in Dublin Bay by circulating a rumour of a landing at Waterford; and, which Hobson, engages the officer of the Scottish Borderers in talk near Howth, while the volunteers slip away with the 1,000 rifles (out of 1,500 purchased) delivered there; Dangerfield comments that, since Hobson and Figgis each sought to represent themselves as central to the event, the necessary casualty was truth.
Belfast Public Library holds AE (1916); Bye-ways of Study (1918); Gaelic State Past and Future (1917); Irish Constitution (1922); Mount of Transfiguration (1915); Recollections of the Irish War (1927)
Belfast Linen Hall Library holds Mount of Transfiguration (1915); AE, A Study of a Man and a Nation (1916)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)