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Life
| 1852-1924 [Maurice Francis Egan]; b. 21 May; son of Irish immigrant of 1820s, who settled in Philadelphia and m. into an Irish family of older provenance; ed. La Salle Academy, and later Georgeton Univ.; published poetry in Ave Maria and Sacred Heart Messenger; but also Saturday Evening Post; The Century; wrote That Girl of Mine (1887) in fulfilment of contract made by his lawyer-boss with a publisher; followed with That Lover of Mine; wrote fiction showing Irishmen learning to practice their religion in an American context; professor of English, Notre Dame Univ., Chicago, from 1888, and later at Catholic Univ. of America, Washington D.C.; |
| issued The Disappearance of Jong Longworthy (1890); The Success of Patrick Desmond (1893); The Vocation of Edward Conway (1896), and The Wiles of Sexton Maginnis (1909) - his most popular work, dealing with a Shaughraun-character who never lies ‘except in the interest of truth’; by his own account he wrote 10-15,000 words a week; a friend of Roosevelt, he left academic life for diplomacy and served as US ambassador (minister) to Denmark, 1907-19; he introduced W. B. Yeats to Roosevelt at White House lunch; also issued Recollections of a Happy Life (q.d.); covered novelists and contributed an essay entitled ‘Irish Novels’ to Charles Welsh, [Managing Ed.] of Irish Literature (1904). JMC |
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Works
Justin McCarthy, gen., ed., Irish Literature (Philadelphia: Morris 1904), gives ‘The Orange Lilies’ from The Land of St. Lawrence, and ‘The Shamrock’.
See also his editorial essay, ‘Irish Novels’, in Irish Literature (1904), Vol. VI, pp.vii-xvii - and note that this essay was previously printed as ‘On Irish Novels’ in Catholic University Bulletin [Washington, D.C.], 10, 3 (July 1904), pp.329-41 [see copy in RICORSO Library, “Criticism”, Monographs, via index or direct.]
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Criticism
There is a paper on him by Robert Mahony of Catholic University of America (1990, 1995).
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References
See Dictionary of American Biography and Brian McKenna, Irish literature, 1800-1875: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1978), p.4.
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