Seumas O'Sullivan

Background

He was born in Dublin and spent his adult life in the suburb of Rathgar.

Career

His books include Twilight People (1905), Verses Sacred and Profane (1908), The Earth Lover (1909), Selected Lyrics (1910), Collected Poems (1912), Requiem (1917), Common Adventures (1926), The Lamplighter (1929), Personal Talk (1936), Poems (1938), Collected Poems (1940), and Dublin Poems (1946). Terence de Vere White praised him as "a true poet", and was critical of W.B Yeats for leaving him out of his anthology of Irish poets, which he thought a particularly strange decision since Yeats and O'Sullivan were friends, although they quarreled from time to time. by James M. Glass, 1929 and 1931 respectively - for both (the frontispiece) In Mercer Street and the excerpt from Ballad of a Fiddler (page 93)

He had a great admiration for Patrick Kavanagh, and in the 1940s he was one of the very few Irish editors who was prepared to publish his poetry. O'Sullivan's "at homes" on Sunday afternoons were a leading feature of Dublin literary life, as were Russell's Sunday evenings and Yeats's Monday evenings.

He was inclined to be quarrelsome, largely due to his heavy drinking. On one occasion insulting James Stephens publicly at a literary dinner. Even the kind-hearted Russell admitted that "Seumas drinks too much".

Yeats' verdict was that "the trouble with Seumas is that when he's not drunk, he's sober".

Membership

Irish Republican Brotherhood.

Connections

Friend:

William Butler