Padraic Colum, 1881-1972. Irish author
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Finding-Aid for the Colum Papers [00172]Collection Description
Letter, 1923
1 item
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Colum was born in Longford, where his father was workhouse master, on 8 December 1881. At seventeen he became a clerk in the Irish Railway Clearing House in Dublin, but left in 1904 determined to make a living through writing. His first poems appeared in The United Irishman, edited by Arthur Griffith. The Saxon Shillin' (1902) won a competition for a play to discourage young Irishmen from joining the British army. Colum acted with the new Irish National Theatre Society, but after his play Broken Soil was staged in 1903, he concentrated on writing. He was one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre, where his realistic peasant drama The Land (1905) was an early success. Thomas Muskerry (1910) was also staged by the Abbey, but thereafter Colum failed to fulfil his early promise as a dramatist. His first book of verse, Wild Earth, appeared in 1907, with lyric poems like 'The Plougher', 'A Drover' and 'An Old Woman of the Roads'. One of the later collections of verse, Irish Elegies (1958) is interesting for its portraits of Roger Casement, Griffith, James Joyce and others. The Colums lived in France in the early 1930s and Colum renewed an old friendship with Joyce, for whom he typed parts of Finnegans Wake.
The autographed letter, dated April 22, 1923, is to Mr. Johnson and includes a verso autograph poem, “The sea bird to the wave,” a poem apparently unpublished with that given title.
Selected Names
Colum, Padraic, 1881-1972. Irish author