Career

He was brought up in Sligo, and educated at Haileybury. The poetry collection The Withering of the Fig Leaf (1927) was to be published by the Hogarth Press. At the last moment Phibbs became concerned about perceived anti-Catholic sentiment in it, and asked Leonard Woolf to withdraw lieutenant

Another collection, lieutenant Was Not Jones, was issued by Hogarth in 1928, but under the pseudonym R. Fitzurse.

There are many accounts, generally contested, of subsequent events. After some confusion, Graves and Riding were together in Spain, Phibbs and Nicholson were together in Wiltshire.

And Phibbs in 1929 divorced McGuinness. He was subsequently known mostly for anthologies, and non-fiction writing.

As literary editor of The Bell, he gave significant space to poetry from Northern Ireland, and allowed Roy McFadden a critical voice.

His selection, Irish Poems of Today: Chosen from the First Seven Volumes of "The Bell", appeared in 1944.