Norreys Jephson O’Conor

Life
1885-1958; b. New York, 31 Dec.; son of John Christopher and Maria O’Conor [née Jephson]; ed. Cutler School and Harvard (AB, 1907; MA, 1911); studied Old and Middle English under F. N. Robinson, renowned as the editor of Chaucer; initially worked as journal-editor and taught English at Harvard Univ., 1911-13; stayed at the Castle, Mallow, Co. Cork, home of of maternal forebears, 1913-14; worked again as a editor for publishing companies and taught at Radcliffe College, 1918-19; also at Grinnell College, 1922-23, and Mount Holyoke College, 1923-24, and Bryn Mawr College, 1924-26; worked for Civil Defence in California in WWII; O’Conor contributed articles on Irish literature to the Sewanee Review incl. ‘Early Irish Folk-Tales’ (1920) and ‘A Dramatist in Changing Ireland’, on Lennox Robinson (1922); also poems incl. an elegy for Francis Ledwidge (April 1921); his brief “Songs of the Celtic Past” appeared with drawings by E[mily] W[ood] Colby in Art World (April 1917); Late Offering: Poems appeared from the Ward Ritchie Press (LA, Calif. 1952).

m. Grace Edith Corson, in Cambridge, Mass., 17 June 27 1917, with whom two daughters, Moria and Cathleen, and divorced 1935; m. Evangelia Hawley in the same year. died in Santa Barbara, California on 24 Oct. 1958; issued poetry largely in the spirit of the Celtic Twlight (i.e., Celtic Memoirs, 1914; Songs of the Celtic Past, 1918); also wrote a three-act play on the Lennan Shee as The Fairy Bride, with music by Eliot Schenck (1916) and trans. a opera from the libretto of Adelheid Wette (1909); his prose translations and versions of Irish mythology and folklore incl. Battles and Enchantments (1923), reflecting his belief that scholarly translations were useless for ordinary readers; complied Changing Ireland: Literary Backgrounds of the Irish Free State, 1889-1922 (1924), largely from previous essays and reviews, covering ancient and modern Irish writing; engaged with Irish literature in a pointedly non-sectarian spirit; a correspondence which he conducted with Grace Conkling Hazard Conkling during 1918-932 is held in Smith College, Northampton, MA (USA) where she taught. IF2

Smith College - Records holds ..

O’Conor letters to Grace Hazard Conkling [i.e., née Hazard] between 1918 and 1932, dealing almost entirely with literary matters with reference to Amy Lowell, Robert Frost, Siegfried Sassoon and Conkling’s daughter Hilda are held at Smith College Special Collection [Neilson Library], USA. A biography citing the National Cyclopeda of American Biography (Vol. 37, p.391), and a bibliography of his publications are included on the record page.
Samplers

Letter of 1 Oct. 1918: O’Conor writes Conkling telling her that he is now teaching composition at Radcliffe College, but that he is not writing much himself. He congratulates her on her tribute to Francis Ledwidge published in the same issue [of the Yale Review] as his review of Ledwidge's book.. He comments on the political situation in Ireland and notes that he is planning on introducing his composition students to Conkling's poetry. (Notice.)
[...]
Letter of 15 Dec. 1932: Apparently Mrs. Conkling had been scheduled to visit the O'Conors at their London address, but circumstances prevented her from coming. The children were disappointed. He writes of his work on his ‘Elizabethan book’ and that newly uncovered material has prolonged his work on it. However, ‘it will be all the better for the book.’ He tells something of the life the children are enjoying and their life at Edwardes Square. Also he sends congratulates to Elsa, Mrs. Conkling's daughter, who has ‘decided upon the Scandinavian after all!’
—The Smith College record page on NJO’C was prepared by Melvin Carlson, Jr., in 2009 [online].

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Works
Poetry
  • Celtic Memoirs and Other Poems (N: John Lane 1914), 62pp.; ded. to Cathleen Ni H
  • Songs of the Celtic Past (NY: John Lane MCMXVIII [1918]), 171pp., ill. [front. by Emily Wood Colby; ded. to Grace ‘who has made all songs new’].
  • Late Offering: Poems of Norreys Jephson O’Conor (LA: Ward Ritchie Press 1952), 96pp.
Fiction
  • Beside the Blackwater (NY: John Lane 1915), 72pp. [see note].
  • Battles and Enchantments Retold from Ancient Irish Literature (London: Sands; Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1923), 168pp., ill. Grace A. Barron [available at Internet Archive - online].
  • There was a Magic in Those Days (London: Elkin Mathews 1928), 64pp.
Drama
  • The Child's Hansel and Gretel: A Fairy Tale Opera, Adapted from the Libretto of Adelheid Wette, trans. by Norreys Jephson O’Conor (NY: F. A. Stokes 1909), 106pp.
  • The Fairy Bride: A Play in Three Acts, a prologue to Irish drama [on three acts], with music comp. and arr. by Elliott Schenck (John Lane MCMXVI [1916]), 99pp. + 3pp. score.; Do. [another edn.] (NY: Sam. French [1926]).
Criticism
  • Changing Ireland: Literary Backgrounds of the Irish Free State, 1889-1922 (Harvard UP 1924), xii, 259pp. [see details].
  • A Servant of the Crown in England and North America, 1756-1761, Based on the Papers of John Appy, Secretary and Judge Advocate of His Majesty’s Forces [A Publication of the Society of Colonial Wars in the State of New York] (NY & London: D. Appleton-Century Co. 1938),
History & Genealogy
  • Godes Peace and the Queenes: Vicissitudes of a House, 1539-1615 (Harvard UP 1934), 154pp. and maps [Norreys family history in Nottinghamshire and Lincoln].
Articles
  • ‘The Trend of Anglo-Irish Literature’, The Bookman (1934) [Irish Issue in which Beckett’s review of ‘Recent Irish Poetry’ appeared.]
  • ‘Early Irish Folk-Tales’, in Sewanee Review, Vol. 28 (Oct. 1920), pp.545-57 [available at JSTOR online]

See also review of R. Mitchell Henry’s Evolution of Sinn Fein, in New York Times (10 April 1921) [‘It is easier to espouse the cause of one of the Irish political parties than, after weighing conflicting statements, to find the right and wrong of the Irish question. [...]’ [available at NY Times Archive [online; accessed 28-07-2008].

Bibliographical details
Changing Ireland: Literary Backgrounds of the Irish Free State, 1889-1922, by Norreys Jephson O’Conor, author of Battles and Enchantments, &c. [epigraph: ‘Their sound is gone out into all lands; and their words into the ends of the earth’: Psalms XIX:4] (Harvard UP; London: Humphrey Milford / Oxford UP 1924), xii, 259pp. Preface [vii-ix].

Changing Ireland: Literary Backgrounds for the Free State, 1899-1922 (Harvard UP 1924) is available at Internet Archive [online]; see also download copies in RICORSO [attached]

CONTENTS: I. One Reason for the Irish Problem [3]; II. The Gaelic Background of Ireland’s Literary Revival [20]; III. The Early Irish Fairies and Fairyland [45]; IV. The Re-davisation of Anglo-Irish Literature [64]; V. Yeats and His Vision [72]; VI. A Note on T. W. Rolleston [83]; VII. Dora Sigerson Shorter [88]; VIII. Modern Anglo-Irish Poetry [94; see details]; IX. Some Irish Poets of the Allied Cause in the World War [121; see details]; X. Lord Dunsany: Irishman [148]; XI. A Dramatist of Changing Ireland [ON Lennox Robinson].

REVIEWS: A Celtic Psaltery [175]; The Father of the Celtic Renaissance [179]; James Stephens and the Irish Sagas [186]; Lady Gregory: Folklorist [192]; Curtin’s Irish Folk Tales [196]; an Irish “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” [199]; Ireland and England [205]; Prelate and Professor on Irish Politics [211]; an Irish Leader and a Sinn Fein Plea [220]; Chesterton Analyzes the Irish Question [230]; an Apologist for Sinn Fein [235]; Ireland from A Modern Point of View [240]; Notes; Index of Names.

Chap. VIII: Modern Anglo-Irish Poetry contains studies of Nora Hopper (p.95ff.), J. M. Synge (98-99), James Stephens (p.99-102), Robert Graves (102-05), Seamus O’Sullivan (p.99; pp.105-06), Padraic Colum (107-08), James H. Cousins (109-110), Joseph Campbell/Seosamh MacCathmaoil (110-12), Miss W. M. Letts (112-16), Francis Ledgwidge (116-20) [End.]

Chap. IX: Some Irish Poets of the Allied Cause in the World War offers a reminder that "the number of these men and women is realised by few Americans" since "[p]oets of the Rebellion [1916] monopolized the stage to the exclusion of poets loyal to the War." (p.122.) Poets studied incl. Stephen Gwynn (p.123-26), Frederick S. Boas (126-27), Katherine Tynan (127-28); Florence M. Wilson (128), Jane Barlow (128), Robert Graves (131-32), Thomas Kettle (133-34), W. B. Yeats (135), “AE” Russell (135-37), Winifred Letts (137-38), Patrick MacGill (137-40), and Francis Ledwidge (137-40; end.)

Preface: ‘[...] Although it is generally known that many of the leaders in the Irish Rebellion of 1916 were men of letters, comparatively few people realize how intimate has been the connection between Irish political thought and the literary revival. Standish O’Grady, Douglas Hyde, and William Butler Yeats are as truly founders of the Irish Free State as were Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins: O’Grady reinterpreted the glory and the dignity of early Gaelic Ireland; Hyde stayed the decay of Gaelic speech; and Yeats added to the national heritage a beauty partly compounded of ancient things. In thirty years Irish men and women have grown to understand the continuity of their tradition: that they are the inheritors of a highly developed tribal civilization untouched by Roman influences, revealed in a vernacular literature going back to prehistoric times and of a high stage of stylistic development. Behind the work of the creative writers, and even of the Gaelic League, lies the accomplishment of the scholars who have [vii] edited, arranged, and explained the literature written in Gaelic from the ninth to the nineteenth century: this is the treasure-house of the national imagination, literary manner, and polity. Consciously or unconsciously, the Irish writers in Gaelic and in English who have built up the ideal of nationality expressed politically in the Free State have been influenced by their Gaelic literary heritage. Fully to understand the development of Ireland from 1889 to 1922 requires a knowledge of Anglo-Irish literature of the period; and to grasp the significance of this literature is to examine it in relation to the older Gaelic; Anglo-Irish literature, though written in English, thus is found Irish in imagination and in style.
 The papers collected in this volume are an attempt at such a study, in which the late Thomas MacDonagh, with Literature in Ireland, was a distinguished pioneer.[...]’ (pp.vii-viii) [Available at Internet Archive - online; accessed 06.05.2024. See also under Mary Hayden - supra.]

[...]

Chapter XI: ‘A Dramatist in Changing Ireland’, being wholly devoted to Lennox Robinson, previously7 appeared as "A Dramatist in Changing Ireland" in the Sewanee Review, Vol. 30 (July 1922) [available at JSTOR online]. See also copy under Lennox Robinson - as attached.

Ireland from a Modern Point of View (1923, being a review of Mary Hayden & George A. Moonan, A Short History of the Irish People): ‘Probably no event in modern Ireland has proved to be of more far-reaching importance than the founding of the Gaelic League in 1893; for, through the efforts of this society, not only has the Irish language been rehabilitated, but Irish men and women have been brought to a real consciousness of their national heritage from the past in customs, polity, and thought. Of course, foreign scholars have seconded ably the endeavors of the League to point out that there is an Irish civilization. The Germans particularly lost no opportunity to discover the splendors of Gaelic antiquity, with a purpose made clear only in the summer of 1914, and not yet understood by many Irish people, especially in these United States. It was the well-known Heinrich Zimmer who, as long ago as 1887, published in the Preussische Fahrbucher his now famous essay on “The Irish Element in Medieval Culture.” Thanks to such various and cumulative researches and impulses, Irish people are now becoming universally [241] aware of the continuity of their culture and their traditions.’ (pp.240-41; available at Internet Archive - online.)

[ A raw copy of Changing Ireland (1924) is available in RICORSO > Library > Critics - via index or as attached. Line breaks to be met in the .html download from Internet Archive have been eliminated and some editorial attention has been given to layout and OCR (i.e., spelling). The following formats are available in RICORSO - .html, .pdf, and .doc. ]

 

References
Desmond Clarke, Ireland in Fiction: A Guide to Irish Novels, Tales, Romances and Folklore [Pt. 2] (Cork: Royal Carbery 1985), lists Battles and Enchantments Retold from Ancient Irish Literature (London: Sands; Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1923), 168pp. [freely based on Stokes and de Joubainville]; There was a Magic in Those Days (London: Elkin Mathews 1928), 64pp. ill. J. Gower Parks [based on ‘The King of the Leprechauns, Journey to Emania’ with many parallels to Swift’s Voyage to Brobdingnag; Esirt the leprechaun in Fergus’s palace at Emain ... told in matter of fact way’].

Beside the Blackwater (1915; Kessinger rep. 2010) - a novel set in Ireland, where the Blackwater River flows through the countryside. The main character, Martin, is a young man who inherits his family’s estate in the area and moves there to start a new life. He falls in love with a local girl named Bridget, but their relationship is complicated by the social and political tensions of the time. The novel explores themes of love, class, and nationalism, as well as the beauty and complexity of the Irish landscape. O’Conor’s writing style is lyrical and descriptive, painting a vivid picture of the countryside and its people. (Kessinger notice in Amazon - online.)

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