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Life
1900-1980 [usu. Lady Longford; Christine Patti Pakenham, Countess of Longford; née Trew]; b. Chedder, Somerset, 6 Sept., dg. of Richard and Amy Trew and raised by her mother after her parents separation; ed. Oxford Wells High School; Somerville College, Oxford; m. Edward Pakenham (Lord Longford - q.v.), 1925, and lived at Pakenham Hall [Tullynally Castle], Castlepollard, Co. Westmeath, and in Dublin; novels such as Making Conversations (1931); and numerous Gate plays; Managing Director, 1961-64; d. 14 May. DIW DIH DIL IF2 ATT OCIL
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Works
Plays incl. Lord Edward (Longford Prods. 1941); The United Brothers (Longford Prods., 1944); Mr Jiggins of Jigginstown (Gate 1933), included in Plays of Changing Ireland, ed. Curti[n]s Canfield (NY: Macmillan 1936), adapted from her own novel; The Hill of Quirke (Longford 1953); The United Brothers (Dublin Hodges Figgis 1942); Patrick Sarsfield (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1943); The Earl of Straw (1945); The Hill of Quirke (Dublin: P J Bourke, 1958); Mr Supple, or Time Will Tell (Dublin: P. J. Bourke [n.d.]); Tankardstown (Dublin: P. J. Bourke [n.d.]).
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Novels incl. Making Conversation (London: Stein & Gollancz 1931); Country Places (London: Gollancz 1932; Dublin: Parkside Press 1945); Mr Jiggins of Jigginstown (London: Stein & Gollancz 1933); Printed Cotton (London: Methuen 1935); and A Biography of Dublin (London: Methuen 1936).
Miscellaneous, Vespasian and Some of His Contemporaries (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1928).
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Criticism
Robert Hogan, After the Irish Renaissance: A Critical History of the Irish Drama since ‘The Plough and the Stars’ (Minneapolis: Minnesota UP 1967), espec. p.268; John Cowell, No Profit But the Name: The Longfords at the Gate Theatre (O’Brien Press 1989), 224pp. [with index]; Kathleen A. Quinn, ‘Christina Pakenham, Lady Longford' in Bernice Schrank & William Demastes, ed., Irish Playwrights, 1880-1995: A Research and Production Sourcebook (CT: Greenwood Press 1997), pp.159-68.
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Commentary
Cheryl Herr, For The Land They Loved (Syracuse UP 1991): In P. J. Bourke’s plays, the conventions appear lowercase [i.e., giving a populist rather than an conventionally aristocratic view of the Rising], approximating a realism in the treatment of 1798 that was to develop later in, for instance, Christine Longford’s United Brothers (1942).
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Quotations
The Gate: ‘The Gate has not fettered itself by pseufo-national Shibboleths. It has not tied itself to the letter of Nationality, which is death only too often to the spiritˆ. (‘A National Asset’, in Motley, 1, 1, March 1932, p.2; quoted in in Shaun Richards, ‘A Dramatic Form “at the end of its tether”: Brian Friel and the Irish Peasant Play’ [lecture], in Proceedings of the Irish Research Group, Natal, Brasil, in 2013.)
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References
Brian Cleeve & Ann Brady, A Dictionary of Irish Writers (Dublin: Lilliput Press 1985), novels inc. Country Places (1932), clever, malicious sketch of domestic life of Anglo-Irish gentry; Mr. Jiggins of Jigginstown (1933), ‘silly people’ and county families; Printed Cotton (1935), the autobiog. of Miss Cooke of Cookestown, dg. of strict Protestant and Unionist family. See Irish Book Lover, 24. IF2 lists Country Places (1932), Mr Jiggins of Jigginstown (1933), and Printed Cotton (1935); also translated The Furies.
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D. E. S. Maxwell (Modern Irish Drama, 1984) lists Mr Jiggins of Jigginstown, in Curtis Canfield, ed. Plays of Changing Ireland (NY 1936); The United Brothers (Hodges Figgis, 1943).
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