Life
1895-1967 [Kenneth Sheils Reddin; occas. pseud. Kenneth Sarr], b. Dublin; son of Mrs. Reddin, who held Sundays in Artane in the 1910s; ed. Belvedere, Clongowes, and St. Enda’s, attended UCD; participated in 1916 and subsequently interned; studied law, and became Judge of the District Courts, 1922; short one-act plays, The Passing, Tailteann winner 1924, then produced at the Abbey (1924), set in Dublin slums;
wrote Old Mag (Abbey 1924), a play dealing with a Waterford street-vendor; also Somewhere to the Sea (1936), set at close of Black-and-Tan war, with literary characters such as AE, James Stephens, Susan Mitchell, and Maire Nic Shuiblaigh; as District Justice, he heard driving charges against Samuel Beckett in Shankill Court, 1937; wrote Another Shore (1945), also set in Dublin; he also wrote for children; d. 17 Aug. 1967. DIB DIW IF2 DIL OCIL
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Works
Novels, Somewhere to the Sea (London: Nelson 1936), as Sarr; Another Shore (London: Cresset 1945); Young Man with a Dream (NY: Current Books A. A. Winn [1946]).
Plays [as Sarr], The Passing, a tragedy in one act (Dublin & Cork: Talbot 1924) [Tailteann Prize]; Old Mag (Dublin & Cork: Talbot 1924); The White Bolle-Trie: A Wonder Story (Dublin & Cork: Talbot 1927).
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References
Desmond Clarke, Ireland in Fiction [Pt. II] (Cork: Royal Carbery 1985), lists The White Bolle-Tree (1927); Somewhere to the Sea (1936), as Sarr; A nother Shore (1945); Mary Ann and the Old Party, for children (1946).
Brian Cleeve & Anne Brady, A Dictionary of Irish Writers (Dublin: Lilliput 1985), identifies Somewhere to the Sea and Another Shore as adult novels.
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