Anthony Cronin Biography

Irish poet, novelist, and critic, born in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, educated at University College, Dublin. In 1951 he became associate editor of The Bell. His reminiscences of the city during the early 1950s are contained in Dead as Doornails (1976), which provides detailed portraits of Flann O'Brien, Patrick Kavanagh, and Brendan Behan. His numerous collections of poetry include Poems (1957), Collected Poems: 1950–1973 (1973), R. M. S. Titanic (1981), The End of the Modern World (1989), and Relationships (1994). Cronin's poetry is remarkable for the tone of relaxed urbanity with which it ranges widely through his philosophical and political preoccupations. Many of his poems form strenuously antiromantic treatments of social and ideological aspects of modern Irish life. His novels, The Life of Riley (1964) and Identity Papers (1979), are often highly amusing in the unfoldings of their intricate narratives. His critical writings include A Question of Modernity (1966) and Heritage Now (1982), a survey of Irish literature in the English language. Among his other works is the biography of Flann O'Brien, No Laughing Matter (1989). In 1980 he was appointed Cultural and Artistic Adviser to the Irish Prime Minister.