Life
1863-1941; b. 19 Jan., Pogue’s Entry [cf. infra], Antrim town; son
of cobbler put out of work my factory products, and Anna (née) Gilmore
[var. Gilmour], a Catholic who married his father against the wishes of
her family but ‘proved a true Christian’ in her son’s estimation;
and a story-teller; taken on as stable boy by local landlord; worked in
Scottish mines; enlisted in marines, learned to read, and became boxing
champion; served in Middle East naval campaigns; emigrated to US; worked
in Bowery missions; ordained minister at Yale and held pulpit in Fifth
Avenue Church of the Ascension, preaching socialist Christianity; began
writing after an encounter with Jack London in America; issued From
the Bottom Up (1910), autobiography; pub. My Lady of the Chimney
Corner (1913), centrally concerning his mother; called upon by Lloyd
George to bolster moral in WWI; God and Tommy Atkins (1918), recording
his experience as an army chaplin; living at Peekshill, NY, in 1919; The
Souls of Poor Folk (1921), more Antrim reminiscences; later asked
to mediate in General Strike, 1929 (i.e., dissuading workers); Anna’s
Wishing Chair (1937), a sequel to My Lady; focusing on conditions
her hardship and religious faith; visited Belfast in 1934 and 1938, as
recounted by John Hewitt [see infra]; returned to Belfast in 1938 and
other occasions; d. California; bur. in Antrim parish churchyard; his
birthplace purchased as a museum in [?]1943. DIW DIB DIL DUB OCIL IF
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Works
From The Bottom Up ([1910] London: Eveleigh Nash 1914); The Magyr,
A Story of the Social Revolution (Socialist Publ. Co. [1911]), 277pp.;
My Lady of the Chimney Corner (NY: Century/London: Collins 1913)
[orig. priv. by the author] 224pp.; Do., another edn. (London:
Eveleigh Nash [1913]), 224pp.; Do., another edn. (NY: Century 1940);
Do., another edn., intro. G. F. Maine (London: Collins [1954]),
156pp.; Do., another edn. (London: Collins [n.d.]), 255pp., with
roadmap of N. Ireland, pls. and port.; Do., another edn., intro.
Alastair Smyth (Belfast: Appletree 1980), 142pp.; God and Tommy Atkins
[by Alexander Fitzgerald Irvine]; (1918; 4th ed. 1918), 127pp.; The
Souls of Poor Folk (London: Collins [1st June] 1921; [2nd Apr.] 1927),
260pp.; Anna’s Wishing Chair and Other Chimney Corner Stories
(Belfast: Ouden Press [Quota] 1937), 133pp., plates incl. port.; pref.
Lady Aberdeen; The Man from the World’s End, and Other Stories
(1926); A Fighting Parson [autobiography] (Boston: Little, Brown
& Co. 1930); Do., another edn., (London: William & Norgate
1930 [‘printed in USA’]), 188pp., front. port.; joint edn.,
My Lady of the Chimney Corner and The Souls of Poor Folk
[1939]; My Cathedral, A Vision of Friendship [3rd edn.] (Belfast:
Carter Publ. [1950]), 46pp. [sermon] [cf. IF infra]; Chimney Corner
Revisited (Belfast: Appletree 1984), 127pp.; also Die heilige in’haar
hoekje Rinhem? (n.d.), 208pp. Also ‘Alexander Irvine’, foreword
to Hubert Quinn, Dear Were the Days (Dublin: Talbot 1934):‘his
people and my people of the glens of Antrim’. COMM, Alastair Smyth’s
introduction to My Lady of the Chimney Corner (1980).
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Criticism
John Hewitt, ‘Alec of the Chimney Corner’, Threshold
35 (winter 1984/85), pp.34-39; [later rep. in Tom Clyde, ed., Ancestral
Voices, 1987].
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Notes
Library of Herbert Bell, Belfast, holds, Anna’s Wishing
Chair & Other Chimney Corner Stories [n.d.]; My Cathedral
[?]; From The Bottom Up (London 1914); The Fighting Parson
(London 1930); My Lady of the Chimney Corner (London n.d.) [signed
copy]. UUC LIB holds My Lady; World’s End; Bottom Up, all
PR6017.
Books in Print (1994): My Lady of the Chimney Corner NY: Century/London: Collins 1913; n. e. London: Eveleigh Nash 1914; rep., intro. G F Maine Collins: Fontana 1954; rep. intro. Alastair Smyth Belfast: Appletree 1980, 1993 [0 86281 464 2]
Whelan Cat. (No. 32) lists My Lady of the Chimney Corner and The Souls of Poor Folk (Collins [n.d.])
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919); b. [no date] in Antrim; autobiog, From the Bottom Up (Heinemann 1910); addresses entitled God and Tommy Atkins (1918) [addresses]; My Lady [...&c.] (8th ed., 1914) [‘a story of love and poverty in Irish peasant life’]; strongly evangelical atmosphere; note that Brown considers My Lady to be set in Famine times, and remarks references to Fenians, which seems to mean ‘Catholic’; better understood by reading the author’s autobiography (From the Bottom Up, 1910).
Desmond Clarke, Ireland in Fiction: A Guide to Irish Novels, Tales, Romances and Folklore [Pt. 2] (Cork: Royal Carbery 1985); (solely under Irving; 1863-1914 err.), Irish novelist, preacher and lecturer, chosen by Lloyd George as one of the world’s six great speakers; cottage bought by publication subscription as memorial in 1934 [?err. for 1943]; d. New York [err.]; Anna’s Wishing Chair (Belfast: Quota 1937); Souls of Poor Folk (London: Collins 1921); and an autobiography, Fighting Parson [n.d.]. IF2 lists My Cathedral, A Vision of Friendship (Belfast, n.d.) [‘not strictly of Irish interest ... novel (sic) ... friendships, loyalties, intimate thoughts and tastes in literature; very charmingly written’]; The Souls of Poor Folk (Lon 1921) [sequal to My Lady; incl. quote, ‘Catholics and Protestants had no dealings with each other. They were farther apart than the Jews and Samaritans were. And yet, my dearest chum was a Roman Catholic’]; Anna’s Wishing Chair and other Chimney Corner Stories (Belfast 1937), preface by Lady Aberdeen.
Reference and quotation in P. J. Kavanagh, Voices in Ireland (John
Murray 1994), p.11, giving b. date as 1863. NOTE that IF2 gives his death
date as 1914, and DIW as c.1926, and that Hewitt (infra) gives Scott’s
Entry as his place of birth, instead of the more freq. cited Pogue’s
Entry.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)