Seán O'Casey
Seán O'Casey (Irish: Seán Ó Cathasaigh [ˈʃaːn̪ˠ oː ˈkahəsˠiː]; born John Casey; 30 March 1880 – 18 September 1964) was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.
Seán O'Casey
John Casey
30 March 1880
Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland
Seán Ó Cathasaigh
Dramatist
English
Breon O'Casey, Niall, Shivaun
Early life[edit]
O'Casey was born at 85 Upper Dorset Street, Dublin, as John Casey, the son of Michael Casey, a mercantile clerk (who worked for the Irish Church Missions), and Susan Archer.[1] His parents were Protestants and he was a member of the Church of Ireland, baptised on 28 July 1880 in St. Mary's parish,[2] confirmed at St John the Baptist Church in Clontarf,[3] and an active member of St. Barnabas' Church on Sheriff Street[4] until his mid-20s,[3] when he drifted away from the church. There is a church called 'Saint Burnupus' in his play Red Roses For Me.
O'Casey's father died when Seán was just six years of age, leaving a family of thirteen.[3] The family lived a peripatetic life thereafter, moving from house to house around north Dublin. As a child, he suffered from poor eyesight, which interfered somewhat with his early education, but O'Casey taught himself to read and write by the age of thirteen.
He left school at fourteen and worked at a variety of jobs, including a nine-year period as a railwayman on the GNR. O'Casey worked in Eason's for a short while, in the newspaper distribution business, but was sacked for not taking off his cap when collecting his wage packet.[5]
From the early 1890s, O'Casey and his elder brother, Archie, put on performances of plays by Dion Boucicault and William Shakespeare in the family home. He also got a small part in Boucicault's The Shaughraun in the Mechanics' Theatre, which stood on the site of what was to be the Abbey Theatre.
Archival collection[edit]
In 2005, David H. Greene donated a collection of letters he received from O'Casey from 1944 to 1962 to the Fales Library at New York University. Also in the collection are two letters written by Eileen O'Casey and one letter addressed to Catherine Greene, David Greene's spouse.
O'Casey's papers are held in the New York Public Library, the Cornell University Library, the University of California, Los Angeles Library System, the University of London Library, the National Library of Ireland, Colby College, Boston College and the Fales Library.
Legacy[edit]
In Dublin, a foot bridge on the Liffey is named after him.
