Joseph Campbell Biography

Irish poet, born in Belfast; he became a participant in the Irish Revival after Padraic Colum introduced him to Dublin literary circles in 1902. In 1906 he became a teacher in London, where he was secretary of the Irish Literary Society. Interned as a Republican during the upheavals leading to Ireland's independence, he went to New York upon his release, where he formed the School of Irish Studies in 1925 and began The Irish Review in 1934. He returned to Ireland in 1939. A great deal of Campbell's poetry has its origins in Gaelic culture. His first major achievement was to supply lyrics for Herbert Hughes's settings of Songs of Uladh in 1904, some of which have since passed into the Irish folk tradition. The Garden of Bees (1905), his first collection of poetry, was followed by The Rushlight (1906), The Gilly of Christ (1907), and The Mountain Singer (1909), each of which displays his elegant simplicity of style. A number of his finest poems appear in Earth of Cualann (1917), which Austin Clarke, editor of Campbell's Collected Poems (1963), believed to contain the first use of free verse by an Irish writer. Campbell also wrote several plays, including Judgement, which was produced at the Abbey Theatre in 1912. A critical biography, Joseph Campbell: Poet and Nationalist, by A. A. Kelly and Norah Saunders, appeared in 1988.