Author Description

(Among the special gifts of the Anglo-Irish literary tradition to English literature are clarity, splendid wit, gaiety, and a sharply realistic approach to life. Descended from Protestant Anglo-Irish stock, Esme Stuart Lennox Robinson, commonly known as Lennox Robinson, shared many of the characteristic traits of the writers in this tradition which went back to Swift and which reached through Goldsmith and Sheridan down to the most intellectual of modern Irish playwrights, Denis Johnston. Lennox Robinson s contributions to the realms of literature during his long life-span of seventy-two years were many and varied. Besides being very productive in the theatre, he wrote a slender autobiographical novel, two autobiographies, and two biographies. In addition, he brought out collections of his essays and short stories, edited letters and memoirs, compiled several anthologies of Irish poetry, prepared an official history of the Abbey Theatre, and served briefly as a journalist and as a London drama critic. But his reputation today rests almost entirely upon his devoted work for the Abbey Theatre; consequently, it seems fitting that Lennox Robinson concern itself mainly with him as a man of the theatre. He began writing for the Irish theatre when Synge, its first great dramatist, was nearing his premature death. The production of Robinson s second play, Cross Roads (1909), at the Abbey Theatre was, in fact, postponed as a mark of respect for the burial of his famous predecessor. With the departure of Synge, a door closed on an era in which the poetic interpreters of the life of the folk were in the ascendant. (Lennox Robinson is an important figure in Irish Literary Movement and author, amongst others, of The Whiteheaded Boy . This is the first full-length study of the life and work of Lennox Robinson including notes, bibliography and index)