Prisoner Profile: Frank O’Connor

Frank O’Connor (1903 – 1966)

• -Born in 1903 as Michael Francis O’Donovan
• -Renowned in the literary world for his work as a novelist, short story writer, travel writer, biographer, poet, dramatist & translator.
• -Raised in Cork by Minnie (Née O’Connor) & Michael O’Donovan.
• -His memoirs “An Only Child” (1961) & “My Father’s Son” (1968) recount his life & difficult childhood in Cork City, describing his struggle growing up with a stern & alcoholic father figure.
• -He fondly describes his mother, who often earned the household’s income, as a figure he admired and looked up to.
• -O’Connor volunteered as a teenager in the Irish Republican Army & fought in the Irish War of Independence against the British Army.
• -After the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December of 1921, he chose the anti-treaty side of the Irish Civil War in 1922.
• -O’Connor was one of many anti-treaty soldiers interned as a prisoner in Cork City Gaol during the Civil War between 1922 and 1923.
• -He refers to the Gaol as “that dreadful place” in “An Only Child” (1961) & describes that “there were four of us in a cell that had been condemned as for one”, as well as the cell being “seething with vermin”.
• -Following his first publication “Guests of the Nation” in 1931, O’Connor contributed immensely to the literary world, with “Bones of Contention” (1936), a biography of Michael Collins titled “The Big Fellow” (1937), and his memoirs, as well as hundreds of stories, articles & translations of Irish poems.
• -He worked as Director  of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin from 1935-1940, where he also produced some plays.
• -He travelled to the USA where he lived and worked through the 1940’s and 1950’s, lecturing in universities & often contributing to the “New Yorker” newspaper.
• -He returned to Ireland in 1960 & became a lecturer in Trinity College Dublin in 1963.