Kavanagh, Patrick (1905-1967), was one of the major Irish poets of the 1900’s. He was also a journalist and wrote fiction and highly praised autobiographical works. Kavanagh’s best-known work is probably The Great Hunger (1942), an epic poem that portrays the grim conditions of rural Ireland through the life of an Irish peasant. Kavanagh completed his first collection of poems, Ploughman and Other Poems, in 1936. His later poetry was published in A Soul for Sale (1947), Come Dance with Kitty Stobling (1960), and Collected Poems (1964). He also wrote a novel, Tarry Flynn (1948), and the fictionalized autobiography The Green Fool (1938). Other autobiographical writings were published in Collected Pruse (1967). Kavanagh’s brother Peter edited many of his writings after his death in such books as By Night Unstarred: An Autobiographical Novel (1978), and the anthology Kavanagh’s Weekly: A Journal of Literature and Politics (1981).
Patrick Joseph Kavanagh was born on Oct. 21, 1905, in Inniskeen in County Monaghan and worked as a shoemaker and farm laborer. He later settled in Dublin and became a critic and journalist. Kavanagh died on April 19, 1967.
