Life
1935- ; [Timothy Drever Robinson]; b. and raised nr. Ilkley Moor, Yorkshire;
national service as RAF bomber wing radar-fitter, Malaya; ed. Cambridge
(Maths.); m. Máiréad; teacher in Bosphorus village, nr.
Istanbul; later lived in Vienna, exhibiting paintings; returned to London
in 1960s, painting, and illustrating technical books; drawn to Aran by
Flaherty’s Man of Aran; first visited and immediately decided
to live there, Summer 1972; learned Irish from Buntús Cainte
[school book]; developed interest in Clare and Burren area; left Aran,
1980; produced maps of Aran and S. Connemara; contrib. to Kevin Whelan,
et al., Atlas of Rural Ireland (1997); issued autobiograpy, My
Time in Space (2001); issued a fiction collection of many years writing,
Tales and Imaginings (2002), incls. ‘‘Orion the Hunter’’,
previously publ. in The Best American Essays (1998), and dedicated
to John Moriarty.
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Works
Commentary, Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage [Vol. 1] (Dublin:
Lilliput/Wolfhound 1986; London: Viking 1989; Penguin 1990); Stones
of Aran: Labyrinth [Vol. 2] (Dublin: Lilliput 1995), 504pp.; ed.,
Connemara after the Famine, Journal of a survey of the Martin Estate
by Thomas Colville Scott, 1853 (Lilliput 1995), 102pp.; ‘Connemara
after the Famine: thomas Colville Scott’s journal of the survey of
the Martin Estate’, History Ireland (Summer 1996), pp.12-16;
Setting Foot on the Shores in Connemara and Other Writings (Dublin:
Lilliput 1996), 240pp.; ed. and intro., The Aran Islands [1907]
(Penguin 1997), 150pp.
Autobiography, My Time in Space (Dublin: Lilliput 2001), 224pp. Fiction, Tales and Imaginings (Dublin 2002), 256pp. Miscellaneous incl. ‘The Seanchaí and the Database’, in Irish Pages (2, 1 (Spring/Summer 2003), pp.43-53 [infra]; ‘Ogygia Lost’, The Dublin Review, Spring 2004), pp.40-52.
Criticism
Shirley Kelly, ‘Self-Made Man’, interview with Tim Robinson,
Books Ireland (Sept. 1995), pp.193-96.
Maurice Harmon, review of Tales and Imaginings, in Books Ireland (Dec. 2002), p.312.
Jack Hanna, review of Stones of Aran: Labyrinths, in Books
Ireland (Nov. 1995), pp.282-83.
Patrick Curry, ‘Elegies unawares’, review of Stones of Aran, Labyrinth (Dublin: Lilliput 1995), 495pp.; notes that Pilgrimage was reviewed by Breandán Ó hEithir in TLS, 9-15 June 1989.
Michael Viney, review, Stones of Aran: Labyrinth, Irish Times, 23.10.1995, Weekend, p.9.
Luke Dodd, Director of Strokestown Famine Museum, reports on a paper on landscape and the Famine presented by Tim Robinson at at a Conference on Hunger (New York 1995), in Irish Reporter (3rd Quarter 1995), p.15.
Colm Toibín, in Guardian, ‘Books’ (8 Dec. 1995), identifies Aran: Pilgrimage as his favourite book, p.23.
Mary O’Malley, review of Tim Robinson, My Space in Time (2001), in The Irish Times (12 May, 2001); 11.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)