14. Seán O’Casey

Photo in header: By Unknown - Wikipedia, Public Domain,https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6025336

3 Mar 1880 – 18 Sep 1964
St Marychurch

Seán O’Casey was an Irish dramatist and memoirist, living through turbulent times including the 1913 Dublin Lock-out and Strike (starving with fellow workers), the 1916 Easter Rising, the Anglo-Irish War and the Civil War. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes. Seán lived here in St Marychurch for many years, long exiled from his native Ireland. The New York Times suggested that he wrote his own epitaph in the last volume of his autobiographical work, ‘Mirror in my House’:

“Here with whitened hair, desires failing, strength ebbing out of him, with the sun gone down, and with only the serenity and calm warning of the evening star left to him, he drank to Life, to all it had been, to what it was, to what it would be. Hurrah!”

There’s a Blue Plaque marking Seán’s home, but we suggest you raise a pint to him in a local pub.

Download your trail map here.

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