Sean O'Casey · A Life

**The writer whose greatest creation was himself…**

The character Sean O’Casey designed for himself became real and inhabitable — much greater than any of the great stage characters he carved out of his Dublin upbringing.

Born John Casey in Dublin, 1880, whilst his oldest siblings had been educated to the age of eighteen, before he was fourteen the future playwright had already been sent out to work.

As a young man he embraced Irish nationalism, learnt the language, and Gaelicised his name; it was almost time for Sean O’Casey to enter stage right.

It was during this time he began writing, but, unlike the satirical ballads that became staples for the rebels, it would be 1923 before one of his plays was publically performed.

*The Shadow of a Gunman* marked the beginning of his relationship with the Abbey Theatre, and before long he was being touted as J. M. Synge’s heir.

Like his creations, drawn from his own life and those of the people around him, O’Casey’s blunt honesty, his readiness to fight over his opinions, incurred measures of ill will.

Sean O’Casey’s life is as rich and layered as any play, yet in this skilfully crafted biography Garry O’Connor reveals the man behind the myth, and all his glorious contradictions.

Praise for Sean O’Casey

**‘Written with tenderness and great technical skill… It is the measure of this biography that Sean O’Casey does indeed emerge at last as a noble myth-maker, a man of strength and kindness. Garry O’Connor lifts his human contradiction, his “parratox”, towards a universal predicament — an exile which still speaks to a world-wide audience — and makes the dramatist’s tenement a permanent symbol of the rag-and-bone shop of the human heart’ — Richard Holmes, *The Times*

‘We need the kind of book that Mr O’Connor has written, scrupulous in its factuality and full in its documentation. The portrait that emerges is of a good man but a perverse one … It is well and honestly done and it is highly recommended’ — Anthony Burgess, *The Independent*

‘Garry O’Connor’s sharp and moving biography is a portrait of the Irishman as a sour and stinging antagonist who two-fisted his way out of failure and success in a lifelong series of scraps … his grasp of the historical, social and political background to O’Casey’s long, uneven life is detailed, witty and accessible’ — Michael Ratcliffe, *The Observer*

‘Frankness and taste may be found in this life of O’Casey … this is a warm and meticulous book, rich in comprehensive sympathy and finely illustrated’ — John Jordan, *The Irish Press***

**Garry O’Connor** is an English biographer, novelist and playwright. He has written for many newspapers and periodicals, including the *Times, Mail,* and *Theatre Quarterly*, and has had more than twenty works of fiction and non-fiction published, including *The Pursuit of Perfection: A Life of Maggie Teyte*, his grand-aunt, and *Darlings of the Gods: One Year in the Lives of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh*. He is a former director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.