Life
1883-1962 [Francis Dominick Hackett]; b. 21 Jan., Kilkenny, ed. St. Kieran’s
College, Kilkenny [var. Clongowes], where Thomas MacDonagh was his teacher
and lasting friend, with whom he corresponded extensively after Hackett
emig. US, 1895; editorial writer for Chicago Evening Post, c.1901; ed.
Chicago Evening Post weekly literary review; visited Hull House, 1906; became lit. critic
of New Republic, 1912; m. Signe Toksvig; moved to S. France in
1923 to write first novel, That Nice Young Couple (1924); freelance-political
writing for Survey Graphic to finance four years’ research
for Henry the Eighth (1929), complete Killadreenan House, Newtownmountkennedy,
cottage [sic] in Co. Wicklow, 1928-37, Denmark, 1937-39; America from
1939; Denmark from 1952; Book of the Month in US; Francis the First
(1934); The Green Lion censored by Irish Board, together with his
wife’s Eve’s Doctor (1937); settled in Copenhagen during
war years; moved to NY for proposed dramatisation of Queen Anne Boleyn
(1939); also The Senator’s Last Night (1939), novel; resided
in Martha’s Vineyard; bi-weekly literary reviewer in The NY
Times; returned to Copenhagen after war; d. 25 April; criticism
incl. Horizons (1918); Invisible Censor (1921); also Ireland,
A Study in Nationalism (NY 1918; 3rd ed. 1919), and I Choose Denmark
(NY 1940), autobiography and political comment; published by Ruhwoldt
in Germany. DIW DIL IF2 KUN OCIL
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Works
Fiction, That Nice Young Couple (London: J Cape 1924), first
novel; The Green Lion (London: I. Nicolson & Watson 1936),
novel; Queen Anne Boleyn (NY: Doubleday, Doran 1939), novel; The
Senator’s last Night (NY: Doubleday, Doran 1939).
Biography, Personal History of Henry the Eighth (London: Jonathan Cape 1929). 543pp. [infra]; Francis the Great, Gentleman of France (London: Heinemann 1934).
Miscellaneous, Ireland, a Study in Nationalism (NY: Huebsch 1918); Horizons (NY: Huebsch 1919), lit. criticism; The Irish Republic (NY: Huebsch 1920); ed. On American Books (BW Huebsch 1920); The Invisible Censor (NY: Huebsch 1921), sketches & reviews; American Rainbow (NY: Liveright 1922), reminiscences; The Story of the Irish Nation (NY: Appleton-Century 1922); ... I Chose Denmark (NY: Doubleday, Doran 1940); On Judging Books in General and Particular (NY: J Day 1947), essays and reviews. Articles, ‘A Muzzle Made in Ireland’, in Dublin Magazine, 11 (Oct 1936), pp.8-17.
Reviews, ‘Book of the Week: J. M. Synge’, in Literary Review (2 July 1909), p.1 [review of Poems and Translations, Cuala Press]; also ‘[Francis Hackett] Says Playboy Foes have had Their Day’, Do. (3 Feb. 1912), p.3 [letter dated 2 Feb.; the foregoing both listed in Paul Levitt, Biblioography of Published Criticism (Shannon: IUP 1974)]. Also, of works by James Joyce incl. ‘Green Sickness’, on A Portrait, in New Republic (3 March 1917) [rep. in Robert Deming, ed., James Joyce: The Critical Heritage [2 vols.], (Routledge and Kegan Paul 1970), Vol. 1, pp.94-97; see under Joyce, infra]; and also another on Exiles, in New Republic, XVI No. 206 (12 Oct. 1918, pp.318-19).
Henry the Eighth (London: Jonathan Cape 1929), 543pp., with index. Contents: The Background; Bk 1: Henry’s Boyhood; Book II: Henry and Catherine; Book III: Anne Boleyn; Book IV: Jane Seymour: Book V: Anne of Cleves; Book VI: Katheryn Howard; Book VII: Katherine Parr. [See infra.]
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Criticism
James Cahalan, Irish Novel (1988), p.192.
Peter Costello, Clongowes Wood (1991), p.150.
Aisling Foster, review of Lis Pihl, ed., Signe Toksvig’s Irish Diaries 1926-1937 (Dublin: Lilliput 1994), 450pp., in Times Literary Supplement (16 Dec. 1994). See also Mairín Martin, review of Do., in Books Ireland (Dec. 1994).
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Notes
Desmond Clarke, Ireland in Fiction [Pt II] (Cork: Royal
Carbery 1985), describes The Green Lion (London 1936), a detailed
picture of Kilkenny county and city; boy, virtually orphaned, is sent
to Jesuits boarding college [Clongowes]; rebels against discipline; novel
critical of celibate clergymen as teachers, and ‘conveys an extraordinary
impression of the abnormality of spiritual life in Ireland’ [Clarke].
Banned under Cenesorship of Publications (Ireland) Act.
Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1979),, egalitarian politics; The Green Lion’s hero is a bastard child of passionate mountain girl and seminarian (neophyte); hero worship of Parnell; Last Senator represents all that is reprehensible, mogulism and fascism; Irish Republic pleads for Dominion Home Rule to save Ulster; Story is a skim; his histories discuss birth and tenure of nationalism; consolidation of crown authority; praises right to private judgement. [NOTE DIW ERR, Green Lion, 1935; Senator, 1943]
Hull House (Chicago): Founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Starr, on the lines of Toynbee House in London’s East End, Hull House was host to Francis Hackett in 1906. The Hull House website contains the following information: was born in Ireland in 1883[, Francis Hackett] arrived in America in 1901 and after working as an office by for a law firm in New York, he moved to Chicago where he found employment as a journalist on the Chicago Evening Post. In 1906 Hackett became a resident of Hull House. The web site entry on Hackett quotes his contribution to Survey Magazine (June 1925): ‘[...] I went there as one always goes into a new experience, on the terms and in the light of the inappropriate things I already knew. Only very slowly did I frame for myself the kind of experience I was having. As I trusted myself to it gradually and suspiciously, and felt it gave back more than it was receiving from me, I began to realize the peculiar quality of this strange American creation, its quality of goodness, of intelligence, of decent conscience, which filled Hull House almost to overflowing, and which renewed itself constantly from Miss Addams as a fountain is renewed. Hull House not only recruited strong characters, it was excited about them. [...]’ (See Hull House online.)
Forebears? (I): Sir Thomas Hackett, Lord Mayor of Dublin during
the ‘Patriot Parliament’ of 1689-90, is indicted by Archbishop
William King in his State of the Protestants of Ireland under … King
James II (1691) for ‘many brutish and barbarous things’. (See Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 1991, p.869.)
Forebears? (II): Légende de John Hackett, du Munster’, extract in H. Hovelaque [professeur au Lycée Saint-Louis], Anthologie de la Littérature irlandaise des Origines au XXe siècle (Paris Libraire Delagrave 1924),pp.282-86; in this tale, the brave Hackett, having fought several successful actions against the English after the Williamite campaign, is watching on guard while his troops sleep when a band of elfs transport him to Paris and then to London; in Paris, with his help, the elfs capture the dg. of the king of France, Hackett having relieved her of an ‘épagneul’ which protects her from the elfs; in London, he threatens the King with his épée and succeeds in gaining the royal signature to his pardon; returning to Ireland, he asks for the Princess and is refused but produces the spaniel so that the elfs are sent packing; on telling her his story, she falls in love with our hero, and they married in the the Church of Holy Cross.
Dooley Says: Hackett wrote a feature on Peter Finley Dunne for the New Republic [presum.] during his editorship of that journal (q.d.)
Belfast Central Public Library holds The Story of the Irish Nation (1924).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)