Life
1926-1958; b. Dundalk, Co. Louth; worked Civil Service; plays include Song of the Parakeet (1947; Radio Éireann drama prize), House Under Green Shadows (Abbey 1951), and a dream fantasy, Aisling (37 Theatre Club, 1953; revived by Gate, 1958, and published 1959); Liam Miller, who wrote prefaces to his published plays, considers that the theatre lost ‘an imaginative dramatist of the first rank’ with his early death in a road accident, falling off his bike, he died of asphyxia when his teeth went down his throat, 12. Nov.; Hugh Leonard referred to Meldon a fourth play, unplayed and unpublished; his widow, Barbara (b.1938), married the actor Frank Kelly; she produced Aisling in 1953. DIW DIL/2 OCIL
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Works
‘Purple Path to the Poppy Field,’ in New World Writing: Fifth Mentor Selection (NY: New American Library 1954); Aisling [37 Theatre Club 1953] (Dublin: Progress House 1959); House Under Green Shadows (Dublin: Progress House 1962).
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References
Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1979), judges that the of his work reminiscent of Gerald MacNamara; uses allusions to and parodies of various styles of Irish writing; cites Aisling (1953) as unduly neglected; called by Hugh Leonard, ‘probably our most neglected author.’
Robert Hogan, ed., Seven Irish Plays, ‘Introduction’ (Minnesota UP 1967), cites Song of the Parakeet, a Radio Éireann prize-winning play of 1950; also House under Green Shadow (Abbey, Feb. 1951).
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