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Life
1941- ; b. Skerries, Co. Dublin; ed. De La Salle and UCD; teaches at De La Salle Order school; taught Latin in Kilkenny from 1964 and later returned to Skerries to teach; conducted a media campaign for the maintenance of the subject, but shifted to English, geography, and art after its withdrawal from syllabus; issued The Kybe (1983), set in Skerries during the Napoleonic War, dealing with local events and incorporating a scene set at the battle of Waterloo; also Reprisal (1989), set in Skerries-Balbriggan [Fingall, N. County Dublin], during the period of the Great War and the 1916 Rising; |
On Borrowed Ground (1991), a coming-of-age novel set in the 1950s Dublin; Ancestral Voices (1995), set in Wexford in 1798; In the Shadow of the Ombú Tree (2005), set in Uruguay where a grandmother eloped in 1864 - researched in a journey there in 2001 enabled by the gift of tickets to Ryan and his wife from their children; retired from teaching, 1997; issued Devil to Pay (2010), telling the tale of Alice Kyteler [q.v.] against the background of Norman-Gaelic antagonisms [q.v.]; m. to Margaret with eight children. HOG2 |
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Works
The Kybe: A Novel (Dublin: Wolfhound Press 1983), 256pp. [hb. listed at Barnes & Noble]; Reprisal (Wolfhound Press 1989), 286pp.; On Borrowed Ground (Wolfhound 1991), 175pp.; Ancestral Voices (Wolfhound 1995); In the Shadow of the Ombú Tree (Enniscorthy: Chaos 2005), Devil to Pay (Dublin: Lilliput Press 2010).
See plot summaries, attached.
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Criticism
See interview-article in Books Ireland (Nov. 2010), p.225. There is an entry in Robert Hogan, Dictionary of Irish Writers [2nd. Edn.] (Greenwood 1996).
There is a Hugh Fitzgerald Ryan webpage [see copy of plot summaries attached; accessed 04.08.2011.]
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Notes
Anthony Farrell (fnd.-dir. of Lilliput Press) recommended The Kybe for publication as reader for Wolfhound Press.
Chaos Press was established by Alan Ryan and Eimear Kelly in 2004 and published two books, In the Shadow of the Ombú Tree by Hugh Fitzgerald Ryan and You Can't be Serious by Eithne Scallan. Website notice at indicates that it is unable to accept unsolicited MS at present (online; 04.08.2011).
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