Life
1877-1963; b. Bedford Hse., nr. Listowel, North Co. Kerry; third son &
tenth of twelve children of Protestant clergyman and namesake (d.1891)
who married dg. of one his Catholic tenants, Winifred (née O’Connor;
m. 1861); his father was well-connected and farmed land received from
his family, confining his mission to preaching at St. John’s, Listowel;
family moved to cottage at Kilcara, nr. Duagh, on death of father; young
George exposed to rural traditions among visitors to farm kitchen; sent
to school; read Walter Scott among many other authors; started work in Cork bank, soon returning home;
commenced story-writing; contrib. “Peter Fagin’s Veiled Bride” to Maurice Walsh’s collection in bumber edn. of Weekly Freeman (1900); joined Land Commission, 1901, receiving minimum wage up to 1925;
contrib. “The Crow of Mephistopheles: A Study in Simplicity” to The Shanachie, 1907; wrote The Toothache, a play, never performed
and discovered in 1965; submitted The Country Dressmaker (1907)
to the Abbey, where it played successfully, rescuing the theatre after
the publicity fiaso of Synge’s Playboy in the same year; wrote
a series of plays amalgamating ‘peasant realism’ with supernatural
folk-tales and fantasy, often figuring an overly imaginative character
[‘airy’ or ‘touched’] bent on fulfilling an eccentric
ideal, and willing to die at it; protractedly absent from work due to
illness, 1908-1913; wrote The Pie-Dish (1908) and The
Magic Glasses (1913), a story of fantasy and disillusion; The Dandy
Dolls, in which the priest confronts the Hag’s Son, rejected
by Yeats and Lady Gregory in 1911, published in Five Plays (1914)
[with another by John Guinan], and first staged by Austin Clarke at the
Lyric Theatre, 1945; enlisted in 1916 and served in World War I; ceased attending the Abbey, though attending many music-hall performances;
returned to stage after long absence with ’Twixt the Giltinans
and the Carmodys (Abbey 1923); eight of his plays were printed by
Seumas O’Sullivan in Dublin Magazine, 1924-57; wrote The
Waves of the Sea, in which Slanty Mane and Rich Danagher are Cinderella
and Prince Charming; became increasingly reclusive; latterly refused Michael
O hAodha of Radio Éireann permission to broadcast The Dandy
Dolls and The Magic Glasses, though The Country Dressmaker
was transmitted; described his characters as ‘wicked old children’;
lived in Harcourt St., Dublin, in increasing isolation ; d. 12 May; bur.
Mount Jerome, headstone erected by Duagh Historical Society,
1995. NCBE DIB DIW DIL MAX OCIL FDA
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Works
Five Plays (Dublin: Maunsel 1914; Boston: Little, Brown 1917) [contains
‘The Country Dressmaker’; ‘The Moonlighter’; ‘The
Pie-Dish’; ‘The Magic Glasses’, and ‘The Dandy Dolls’];
The Plays of George Fitzmaurice: Vol 1, Dramatic Fantasies,
ed. and intro. by Austin Clarke (Dublin: Dolmen 1967) [contains ‘The
Magic Glasses’; ‘The Dandy Dolls’; ‘The Linaun Shee’;
‘The Green Stone’; ‘The Enchanted Land’, and ‘The
Waves of the Sea’]; The Plays of George Fitzmaurice: Vol 2,
Folk Plays, ed. and intro. Howard K. Slaughter (Dublin: Dolmen
1969) [contains ‘The Ointment Blue, or The King of Barna Men’;
‘The Pie-Dish’; ‘The Terrible Baisht’; ‘There
are Tragedies and Tragedies’; and ‘The Moonlighter’]; The
Plays of George Fitzmaurice: Vol 3, Realistic Plays, ed. and
intro. Howard K. Slaughter (Dublin: Dolmen 1970) [contains ‘The Toothache’;
‘The Country Dressmaker’; ‘One Evening Gleam’; ‘’Twixt
the Giltinans and the Carmodys’; ‘The Simple Hanrahans’,
and ‘The Coming of Ewn Andzale’]; The Crows of Mephistopheles,
ed. & intro. Robert Hogan (Dolmen 1970); also short works in JIL, 6 (Sept.
1978), incl. ‘Chasing the ghoul’, first printed in The Irish
Emerald (24 June 1905), and The Wonderful Wedding, with John
Guinan.
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Criticism
Maurice Kennedy, ‘George Fitzmaurice: Sketch for a Portrait’, in Irish Writing, 15 (June 1951), pp.38-46.
Liam Miller, ‘George Fitzmaurice: A Bibliographical Note’, in Irish Writing, 15 (June 1951), 47-48.
Irving Wardle, ‘Reputations XV: George Fitzmaurice’, in The London Magazine, 11 (Feb. 1965) [q.pp.].
Gabriel Fallon, review of The King of the Barna Men, and The Magic Glasses, in The Evening Press (18 Sept. 1967).
Austin Clarke, Introduction to Clarke & Howard K. Slaughter, eds., The Plays of George Fitzmaurice, 3 vols. (1967-70) [shorter pieces printed in the Journal of Irish Literature, 6 Sept. 1978].
Mervyn Wall, ‘Ressurected Irish Playwright’, in The Irish Times (8 July 1967).
John P. Conbere, ‘The Obscurity of George Fitzmaurice’, in Éire-Ireland, 6, 1 (Spring 1971), pp.17-26 [infra].
Liam Miller, ‘Fitzmaurice Country’, in The Journal of Irish Literature, 1 (May 1972), pp.77-89.
Howard K. Slaughter, George Fitzmaurice and His Enchanted Land (Dublin: Dolmen Press 1972).
Nora Kelley, George Fitzmaurice 1877-1963 (NY 1973).
Carol Gelderman, ‘Austin Clarke and Yeats’s Alleged Jealousy of George Fitzmaurice’, in Eire-Ireland, 8, 2 (Summer 1973), pp.62-70.
Arthur E. McGuinness, George Fitzmaurice [Irish Writers Ser.] (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP 1975).
Rober Hogan, ‘The Genius of George Fitzmaurice’, in After the Irish Renaissance: a Critical History (Minneapolis UP 1976), cp.170.
John B. Keane, ‘A Pathetic Note Near Death Bed: Anyone Interested?’, in Limerick Leader (19 March 1977).
Carol W. Gelderman, George Fitzmaurice (Twayne UP 1979).
John Cooke, ‘’Tis Mysterious Surely and Fantastic Strange: Art and Artists in Three Plays by George Fitzmaurice’, in Irish Renaissance Annual, I (Delaware UP 1980), pp.32-35.
Jochen Achilles, ‘George Fitzmaurice’s Dramatic Fantasies: Wicked Old Children in a Disenchanting Land’, in Irish University Review, 15, 2 (1985), pp.148-63.
Jochen Achilles, ‘“The Glame from That Old Lamp”: The Unity of George Fitzmaurice’s Plays’, in Éire-Ireland, 20, 4 (Winter 1985), pp.106-29.
Fintan O’Toole, ‘The Magic Glasses of George Fitzmaurice’, in Gabriel Fitzmaurice, ed., The Listowel Literary Phenomenon: North Kerry Writers - A Critical Introduction (Clo Iar-Chonnachta 1994), pp.13-35.
Ernest Boyd, The Contemporary Drama in Ireland (Talbot Press 1918).
Andrew E. Malone, The Irish Drama (NY: Benjamin Blom 1965).
Lennox Robinson, Ireland’s Abbey Theatre: A History [1951] (Port Wash., N: Kennikat Press 1968).
Nicholas Grene, The Politics of Irish Drama: Plays in Context from Boucicault to Friel (Cambridge UP 1999).
See also notices and articles by Michael Ó hAodha, in The Irish Times, 1971-72.
Irving Wallace, ‘George Fitzmaurice’, in London Magazine, Feb. 1967, p.69; cited in Kealy, op. cit., 2002
John P. Conbere, ‘The Obscurity of George Fitzmaurice’, in Éire-Ireland, 6, 1, Spring 1971, pp.17-26.
D. E. S. Maxwell, Modern Irish Drama (Cambridge UP 1984), p. 67-8.
Fintan O’Toole, ‘The Magic Glasses of George Fitzmaurice’, in Gabriel Fitzmaurice, ed., The Listowel Literary Phenomenon: North Kerry Writers - A Critical Introduction, Clo Iar-Chonnachta 1994, pp.13-35.
Eamon Grennan, review of The Plays of George Fitzmaurice, Vol. 1, in The Dublin Magazine, Autumn/Winter 1967, p.92ff.
Una Kealy, “Mysterious and Fantastic Strange: The Life and Art of George Fitzmaurice” [PhD Diss.] Univ. of Ulster 2005).
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Notes
Brian Cleeve & Anne Brady, A Dictionary of Irish Writers (Dublin: Lilliput 1985), gives bio-dates 1878-1963; further details as supra; also wrote for The Dublin Magazine, whose ed. Seumus O’Sullivan was a life-long friend; for many years he lived in deep seclusion.
Brian de Breffny, ed., Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopaedia (London: Thames & Hudson 1983) cites Arthur McGuinness, George Fitzmaurice (1975).
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2: selects The Dandy Dolls [674-77]; FDA2 adds bibl., W R Sanger, ‘Caught Between Tradition and Experiment, George Fitzmaurice’s The Moonlighter’, in H. Kosok, ed. Studies in Anglo-Irish Literature (Bonn: Bouvier 1982).
D. E. S. Maxwell, Modern Irish Drama (Cambridge UP 1984), lists The Magic Glasses, the Dandy Dolls, The Linnaun Shee, the Green Stone, The Enchanted Land, the Waves of the Sea, in The Plays of George Fitzmaurice, Vol 1, Dramatic Fantasies, intro. by Austin Clarke (Dolmen 1967); The Ointment Blue, The Pie-dish, the Terrible Baisht, There are Tragedies and Tragedies, The Moonlighter, in do., Vol. 2, Folk Plays, intro. by Howard K. Slaughter (Dolmen 1970); and The Toothache, The Country Dressmaker, One Evening Gleam, ’Twixt the Giltinans and The Carmodys, The Simple Hanrahans, The Coming of Ewn Anzdale, in do., vol. 3, Realistic Plays, intro. by Howard K. Slaughter (1970). Also Five Plays, The Country Dressmaker, The Moonlighter, The Pie-dish, the Magic Glasses, The Dandy Dolls (Maunsel 1914; Boston 1917). Bibl., Carol Gelderman, George Fitzmaurice (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP 1975); Nora Kelley, George Fitzmaurice 1877-1963 (NY, 1973).
Ted McNulty, ‘The Playwright – Harcourt St.’, a tribute poem: ‘I think George Fitzmaurice/you’re not dead at all,–but still in that room/high up on the bricks/and I’m not fooled/by the open air roof,/cement blocks in a windows,/a bush growing in the chimney,/tricks I’d use myself. (‘The Playwright – Harcourt St., in "Around St Stephen’s Green" [series], On the Block (Salmon 1995).
Bryan MacMahon, The Storyman (1994) includes an account of his meeting with Fitzmaurice.
Posthumous productions include The Linnaun Shee (Lyric, 1949); The King of Barna Men and The Magic Glasses (Abbey, 1967); The Dandy Dolls (Abbey, Sept. 1969).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)