John Millington Synge: A biography - Hardcover

Kiely, David M

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0717121321 ISBN 13: 9780717121328

Publisher: GILL & MACMILLAN LTD, 1994

Synopsis

Book by Kiely, David M.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Synge (1871-1909) was born into a family of landed Protestant gentry and grew up sickly. Although his brothers were successful (one was a physician/missionary, the other a landlord to tenant farmers), Synge was aimless, and only after meeting W.B. Yeats in Paris in 1896 did his life take on direction, as Yeats spurred his interest in Irish nationalism and the supernatural. Kiely draws an almost lyrical picture of Synge: introverted, complex and frequently ill with swollen neck glands. He describes the playwright's sojourns in the Aran Islands; shows how Lady Gregory's and Yeats's rejections, with constructive criticism, of his first play propelled him to eventual success; chronicles his unrequited love for artist Cherrie Matheson and his liaison with actress Molly Allgood; traces the scandals caused by In the Shadow of the Glen, Riders to the Sea and Playboy of the Western World because of their scathing look at Irish morality; and relates his death in Dublin at 37 from Hodgkin's disease. Peopling it with characters such as Oliver St. John Gogarty (the physician who diagnosed his cancer), Abbey and Hollywood actress Sara Allgood (Molly's sister), Arthur Griffith and Jack Yeats, Kiely, a Dublin-based freelancer, has written an illuminating biography of one of Ireland's most famous unknown writers. Photos.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Synge did not live long--he was dead at 38--and came late to playwriting, creating Riders to the Sea when 31. Yet he is a major figure in the Irish literary renaissance, whose brilliant, scandalous Playboy of the Western World set off notorious riots and made him world famous at 35. How did he grow into such a great artist in such a short time? That question haunts every page of Kiely's rich, readable, exhaustively researched, utterly absorbing biography. Kiely follows Synge's development from a sickly, pampered, gifted child of Dublin's upper class into a writer of the first magnitude, spending considerable time retelling familiar stories of Yeats, Maude Gonne, Lady Gregory, and the founding of the great Abbey Theatre in passing. The book's most compelling sections, though, are devoted to the years Synge spent living among the people of the Aran Islands, observing their ways, and collecting their stories. These years, Kiely argues, were the real making of Synge. Jack Helbig

About this edition

• Publisher: GILL & MACMILLAN LTD
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0717121321
• ISBN 13: 9780717121328
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1