O'Connor, Frank

(Irish, 1903–66)

Frank O'Connor was the pseudonym of Michael O'Donovan, born in Cork and largely self-educated. Although best known as a writer of short stories, O'Connor was a highly successful translator into English from the Gaelic. He was also a playwright who was closely involved with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. His stories, in collections including My Oedipus Complex and Other Stories (1963), are quiet, usually comic, beautifully written masterpieces which were highly successful in their day and often published in the New Yorker. They dramatize the trivial incidents of Irish life in such a way that the characters are at the same time sympathetic yet ironically distanced. O'Connor also writes wonderful dialogue.

William Trevor, Sean O'Faolain.

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