Anthony Cronin

Anthony Cronin

Anthony Cronin, by Patrick Swift, 1950, National Gallery of Ireland
Born (1928-12-23)23 December 1928
Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Irish Free State
Died 27 December 2016(2016-12-27) (aged 92)
Dublin, Ireland
Occupation Poet
Nationality Irish
Education University College Dublin

Anthony Gerard Richard Cronin (23 December 1928[1] – 27 December 2016)[2] was an Irish poet, novelist, biographer, critic, commentator, barrister and arts activist.

Biography

Anthony Cronin was born in Enniscorthy,[3] County Wexford. He obtained a B.A. from the National University of Ireland, entered the King's Inns in 1944 and was called to the Bar in 1948.[4] With Flann O’Brien, Patrick Kavanagh and Con Leventhal, Cronin celebrated the first Bloomsday in 1954. He contributed to many television programmes, including Flann O’Brien: Man of Parts (BBC) and Folio (RTÉ).[5] He had honorary doctorates from several institutions, including Dublin University, the National University of Ireland and the University of Poznan.

As an arts activist and adviser on arts and culture to the Taoiseach Charles Haughey (and briefly to Garret FitzGerald), Cronin was the originator of such initiatives as Aosdána, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Heritage Council. He was the inspiration for, and a founding member of, Aosdána, and was elected its first Saoi (a distinction conferred for exceptional artistic achievement) in 2003. Cronin was a member of its governing body, the Toscaireacht, until his death. He was also a member of the governing bodies of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Ireland, of which he was for a time Acting Chairman.

Cronin began his literary career as a contributor to Envoy, A Review of Literature and Art. He was editor of The Bell in the 1950s and literary editor of Time and Tide (London). He wrote a weekly column, "Viewpoint", in the Irish Times from 1974 to 1980. Later he contributed a column on poetry to the Sunday Independent.

His first collection of poems, called simply Poems (Cresset, London), was published in 1958. Several collections followed and his Collected Poems (New Island, Dublin) was published in 2004. The End of the Modern World (New Island, 2016), written over several decades, was his final publication.

Cronin's first novel, The Life of Riley, is a satire on bohemian life in Ireland in the mid-20th century, while his memoir Dead as Doornails addresses the same subject. He also wrote landmark biographies of two Irish writers, No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien (1989) and Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist (1996).

From 1966 to 1968 Cronin was a visiting lecturer at the University of Montana and from 1968 to 1970 he was poet in residence at Drake University.

Cronin lived in Dublin with his wife, fellow author Anne Haverty.[6] He died on 27 December 2016, on the eve of his 93rd birthday.

Bibliography

Verse: main collections

Novels

Literary Criticism and Commentary

Patrick Kavanagh and Anthony Cronin at the church in Monkstown with the carriage in which they had been proceeding about Dublin in the footsteps of Leopold Bloom, the protagonist in Ulysses, 50 years after Bloom traversed the city in James Joyce's novel.

Plays

Memoirs

Biographies

As Editor

About Cronin

References

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