George Fitzmaurice (writer)

George Fitzmaurice (1877 – 1963) was an Irish dramatist and short story writer, some of whose plays were broadcast on Raidio Éireann.

Life

George Fitzmaurice was born in County Kerry, Ireland. In 1907 he submitted The Country Dressmaker to the Abbey Theatre, where it played successfully, rescuing the theatre after the problems of John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World in the same year.^[1]

In 1916 he enlisted in the British Army and returned to Dublin after the war with neurasthenia, rendering him fearful of crowds.^[2]

Selected works

Plays

Similar to the plays of Synge, Fitzmaurice's plays are characterized by strong if not bitter realism mixed with outlandish modes of speech typical of the Irish people of that time.

• The Pie-Dish, 1908
• The Moonlighter, 1912
• The Dandy Dolls (written 1911, published 1914, first staged in 1945)
• The Country Dressmaker, 1914
• ’Twixt the Giltinans and the Carmodys, 1923.

Fiction

The Magic Glasses (1913)

References