Gogarty, Oliver St. John Joseph (1878-1957), was an Irish poet, wit, and literary personality. He became famous as a member of the Bailey Restaurant circle, which included Arthur Griffith, the founder of Sinn Féin, an Irish nationalist movement; the poet Seumas O’Sullivan; and the painter Sir William Orpen. Gogarty was also a friend of the novelist James Joyce, the painter Augustus John, and the poet W. B. Yeats. Joyce portrayed Gogarty as Buck Mulligan in his famous novel Ulysses.
Many of Gogarty’s poems are humorous and irreverent. His Collected Poems was published in 1950. Gogarty is probably best remembered for his entertaining memoirs that vividly re-create his youth in Dublin. The memoirs were published as As I Was Going Down Sackville Street (1937), Follow Saint Patrick (1938), and Tumbling in the Hay (1939). Gogarty also wrote an autobiography, It Isn’t This Time of Year at All (1954).
Gogarty was born on Aug. 17, 1878, in Dublin, Ireland, and practiced as a nose and throat surgeon. In 1937, he moved to London. He went to the United States in 1939 and worked there as a writer and lecturer, dying in New York City on Sept. 22, 1957.
