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Robert Hogan
Life1930-1999 [Robert Goode Hogan]; b. Boonville, Missouri; taught literature at University of Delaware; travelled frequently to Ireland, especially to study Irish theatre; wrote Bucknell UP monographs on Arthur Miller (1964), Eimar O’Duffy (1972), and Mervyn Wall (1972); issued After the Irish Renaissance: A Critical History of Irish Drama Since ‘The Plough and the Stars’ (1968), followed by the six volumes of Modern Irish Drama: Documentary History (1975-92) - chiefly a history of the Abbey; fnd. & ed., Journal of Irish Literature (1972-93), and and invited Irish writers such as Ben Kiely to teach in Delaware; met and married Mary Rose Callaghan, with whom he lived in Delaware and Bray, Co. Wicklow; ed. Dictionary of Irish Literature (1979; rev. & enl. 1996); he also wrote a play, Saint Jane (1966); retired and settled in Ireland with Callaghan, 1991; he lived in Ireland at 40 Seacrest, Bray, Wicklow, Ireland; d. 5 March 1999.
| Obituary - IASIL Newsletter, ed. Bruce Stewart (1999). |
Irish theatrical studies suffered a great loss on 5th March 1999 with the death of Robert Hogan-a prolific scholar and critic and an enthusiastic and effective supporter of Irish writing from the moment of his first descent on Dublin to pursue research on Sean O’Casey. Born in Boonville, Missouri, Bob’s university career passed at Minneapolis and Delaware at each of which universities he magisterially summoned into existence an Irish publishing dimension which he later perpetuated under the Proscenium imprint. Following his Experiments of Sean O’Casey (1960) he edited O’Casey’s incidental writings as Feathers from the Green Crow (1962) - a publication of Missouri UP which was taken on by Macmillan in 1963 - and then embarked on large-scale Irish literary history with After the Irish Renaissance (1968), a ’critical history’ of Irish drama from O’Casey’s Plough onwards. In 1968-70, with Michael J. O’Neill, he edited three volumes of Joseph Holloway’s invaluable playgoing diaries covering the period 1926-44 following his own one-volume selection from this source in 1967. During the same year he edited Seven Irish plays 1946-1964, a lasting monument in the field. In 1970 he edited the dramatic criticism of Frank J. Fay for Liam Miller’s Dolmen Press-forming with Miller an important partnership that led on to six volumes of his "Documentary History of Modern Irish Drama" between 1975 and 1992, conducted with assistance from James Kilroy and Richard Burnham. Since O’Casey (1983), a collection of essays on modern Irish drama, was brought out by Colin Smythe. |
Between 1972-94, Hogan edited the Journal of Irish Literature which he founded as a venue for Irish writers as much as Irish criticism, and which came to include contributions from contemporary dramatists such as J. B. Keane, Thomas Murphy, and Frank McGuinness, as well neglected Irish authors of the period such as Mervyn Wall, and even earlier writers such as Conal O’Riordan and Gerald MacNamara, as well as the “punster” Thomas Sheridan - father of RBS and a personal favourite of Hogan’s. In the same period his Proscenium Press brought out a series of ’Lost Plays’ of the Irish Revival. His Dictionary of Irish Literature (1979) was first of a new species of bio-critical reference work drawing together numerous contributors under a broadly-agreed format. Hogan himself contributed very many entries and a striking historical and critical introduction; and while some of the newer short notices were dismissive of writers who later achieved distinction such as Sebastian Barry, the book continues to provide essential guidance on the whole range of Irish writings in its enlarged two-volume edition of 1996. Monographs on Arthur Miller (1964), Mervyn Wall (1972) and Eimar O’Duffy (1972) as well as innumerable articles and essays in Irish and other journals of literary scholarship complete an astounding curriculum vitae. |
All of this amounts to an extraordinary contribution to Irish literary studies, driven by a passion for the subject and by a degree of literary patriotism that Bob Hogan’s unfailing good manners and easy nature sometimes belied. His instinctive ability to unearth manuscripts and texts together with his considerable gift for the ’management of men’ resulted in an donation to Irish dramatic scholarship unequalled in his generation. Bob’s regular visits to Ireland became a fixture when he settled in Bray, Co. Wicklow, during the 1980s with his gifted and intelligent second wife Mary Rose Callaghan, to whom we extend our profound sympathies at her great personal loss. |
Addendum: Hogan provided a list of corrections to the first edition of The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature (1996) which were shame-facedly received by this writer and transmitted to the editor for correction in the second.
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| —Bruce Stewart (IASIL Sec.) [available online; accessed 23.08.2023.] |
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Works
| Monographs |
- The Experiments of Sean O’Casey (NY: St Martin’s Press 1960),
- Arthur Miller [in American Writers, 40] (Minnesota Archive Edition 1964), 48pp.; Do. [2nd edn., rev.] (1967), 48pp.
- Eimar O’Duffy (Bucknell UP 1972), 84pp.
- Mervyn Wall (Bucknell UP 1972), 75pp.
- ‘Since O’Casey’ and Other Essays on Irish Drama (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1983), 176pp.
- After the Irish Renaissance: A Critical History of Irish Drama Since ‘the Plough and the Stars’ (Minneapolis UP 1967), 304pp. [see details].
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| Edited texts (single authors) |
- ed., Feathers from the Green Crow: Sean O’Casey, 1905-1925 (Missouri UP 1962; London: Macmillan 1963).
- ed. [q.a.,] Betty and the Beast: A Play in Two Acts [Lost Plays series] (Proscenium Press 1967);
- ed., Brendan Behan, Moving Out; and A Garden Party: Two Plays [Short Play Ser. No. 3] (Proscenium 1967).
- ed. and intro., Seven Irish Plays 1946-1964 (Minneapolis UP 1967).
- ed. with Michael J. O’Neill, Joseph Holloway’s Irish Theatre: A Selection from his Unpublished Journal - Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer, Vol.1: 1926-1931 (Dolmen 1968), 88pp.; Do., Vol.2: 1932-1937 (Dolmen 1969), 85pp.; and Do. Vol.3: 1938-1944 (Dolmen 1970), 110pp.
- Drama in Hardwicke Street: A History of the Irish Theatre Company (Rutherford, Madison & Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson UP 1984).
- ed., John O’Donovan, Jonathan, Jack, and GBS: Four Plays about Irish History and Literature (Delaware UP/AUP 1993).
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| Edited texts (multiple authors) |
- ed., Modern Irish Drama: A Documentary History, 6 vols. (Dolmen/Gerrards Cross 1975-92) [see details].
- with William J. Feeney, ed., Lost Plays of the Irish Renaissance - Vol. I: The Abbey Theatre (Newark: Proscenium 1970) [P. T. McGinley: ’Lizzie and the Tinker’; Fred Ryan, ‘the Laying of the Foundation’; James H. Cousins, ‘The Racing Lug’; Lady Gregory: ‘Twenty-Five: A Losing Game’; Padraic Colum, ‘The Saxon Shilling’; Maud Gonne MacBride ‘Dawn’];
- with Feeney, et. al., Lost Plays of the Irish Renaissance, 3 vols. ([var. locs.:] Proscenium Press 1980-84) [see details].
- ed. George Fitzmaurice, The Crows of Mephistopheles and Other Stories (Dolmen 1970).
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| Reference works, |
ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature (NY: Greenwood; Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1980), xviii, 815pp.; and Do. [new enl. edn.], 2 vols. (NY: Greenwood 1996), xx, 1413pp. |
| Miscellaneous |
- with Elisabeth Young-Bruehl & Robert Hogan, ‘An Appraisal of Conor Cruise O’Brien’, Journal of Irish Literature , Vol. III, No. 2 [Newark, Delaware: Proscenium] (May 1974), pp.3-47.
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Bibliographical details
After the Irish Renaissance: A Critical History of Irish Drama Since ‘the Plough and the Stars’ (Minneapolis UP 1967), 304pp. [treats of O’Casey, Yeats, Lennox Robinson, T. C. Murray, Brinsley MacNamara, George Shiels, Louis D’Alton, Paul Vincent Carroll, Denis Johnston, Mary Manning, Micheál Mae Liammóir, Michael Molloy, Walter Macken, Seamus Byrne, John O’Donovan, Bryan MacMahon, Lady Longford, Brendan Behan, Hugh Leonard, James Douglas, John B. Keane, Brian Friel, Tom Coffey, Seamus de Burca, Conor Farrington, G. P. Gallivan, Austin Clarke, Padraie Fallon, Donagh MacDonagh, Joseph Tomelty, and Sam Thompson.]
Modern Irish Drama: A Documentary History, Vol. 1: The Irish Literary Theatre, 1899-1901 (Portlaoise: Dolmen 1975); Vol. 2: with James Kilroy, Laying The Foundations: 1902-1904 (Portlaoise: Dolmen 1976); Vol. 3: with Thomas Kilroy, Richard Burnham et al., The Abbey Theatre: The Years of Synge, 1905-1909 (Portlaoise: Dolmen 1978; Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1992), 385pp. [designed by Liam Miller]; Vol. 4. with Richard Burnham & Daniel P. Poteet, The Rise of the Realists 1910-1915 (Dublin: Dolmen Press; Dufour Edns. 1979), 535pp.; Vol. 5: with Richard Burnam, The Art of the Amateur: 1916-1920 (Portlaoise: Dolmen 1984), 368pp.; 6: with Richard Burnham, The Years of O’Casey, 1921-1926 (Delware UP: Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1992).
| Lost Plays of the Irish Renaissance (1970-84) |
- Hogan, with William J. Feeney, ed., Vol. I: The Abbey Theatre (Newark: Proscenium 1970) [P. T. McGinley: ’Lizzie and the Tinker’; Fred Ryan, ‘the Laying of the Foundation’; James H. Cousins, ‘The Racing Lug’; Lady Gregory: ‘Twenty-Five: A Losing Game’; Padraic Colum, ‘The Saxon Shilling’; Maud Gonne MacBride ‘Dawn’];
- ——, Lost Plays of the Irish Renaissance - Vol. II: Edward Martyn’s Irish Theatre (Dixon, California: Proscenium 1980).
- Hogan, with Richard Burnham, ed., Lost Plays of the Irish Renaissance, Vol III: The Cork Dramatic Society (NY: Proscenium 1984);
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References
Dictionary of Irish Literature (Conn: Greenwood Press; London: Macmillan 1979; rep. in 2 vols. NJ: Greenwood 1996); ‘Arthur Miller’, in Leonard Unger, ed., American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies [?3 vols.], vol. 3 [ed. (NY: Charles Sonbriers & Sons 1974); After the Irish Renaissance: A critical history of Irish Drama since ‘The Plough and the Stars’ (1968).
There is Hogan entry in the Writers Directory for 2005 at Encyclopaedia.com - online.
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Notes
Stricture: in an article proffered as a ‘rebuttal of Hogan’s ill-informed criticism’, Dyschaever charges Hogan with wilful failure to understand poetry of Derek Mahon in his entry in the Dictionary of Irish Literature (1979). (‘History in the Poetry of Derek Mahon’, in Duytschaever & Geert Lernout, eds., History and Violence in Anglo-Irish Literature, Amsterdam: Rodopi 1988, pp.97-109; p.97).
Tribute: The editor of Ricorso here records deep admiration for the extraordinary support that Robert Hogan gave to Irish writers and scholarship, chiefly through his forum the Journal of Irish Literature (1972-94), and for the originality of his indispensable Dictionary of Irish Literature (1979; rev. edn., 2 vols. 1996) - the first compendium of bio-bibliographical information and critical appraisal of its kind in the field. In addition, he graciously supplied corrections to the first printed edition of the Oxford Companion to Irish Literature (1996), without animus or slight and generously acknowledged the magnitude of that project. [Email.]
Proscenium where?: Note that the Proscenium imprint Hogan"s command was given variously in Newark, Delaware, NY, and Dixon, California. The published is accredited with 116 books in Open Library - incl. Hogan (6), M. J. Molloy (4), James Douglas (4), Mervyn Wall (2), P. J. O"Connor (2), Seamus de Burca (2), Brendan Behan (2), Elmer Rice (2), Paul Vincent Carroll (20, Joseph Holloway (2), Seamus Byrne (2), Mario Fratti (2), Tom Murphy (2), John B. Keane (2), Sydney Bernard Smith (2), Daniel Corkery (1), Dion Boucicault (1), Ron Hutchinson (1), Frank O"Connor (1), Juanita Casey (1), John O"Donovan (1) and William O"Connor (1) [See note - infra].
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