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Life
1903-1980 [John Desmond Sheridan]; humorous essays, I Laugh to Think (1946), et al., mostly concerned with amusing aspects of familiar situations and common usage viewed in an entertaining light; novels incl. Paradise Alley (1945); The Rest is Silence (1949); The Magnificent MacDarney (1949); God Made Little Apples (1962); Joking Apart (London: J. M. Dent & Sons 1964); Include Me Out (1968); The Hungry Sheep (New York 1973); and poetry, Joe’s No Saint (1949); contirb. Introduction to edn. of Samuel Lover, Handy Andy (Everyman 1954). DIW
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Works
Fiction (novels), Vanishing Spring (Dublin: Talbot; London: Rich & Cowan 1934); Paradise Alley (Dublin: Talbot 1945); The Magnificent MacDarney (Dublin: Talbot 1949), 285pp. Fiction (stories), The Right Time (Dublin: Talbot 1951; London: Dent 1952). Poetry, Joe’s No Saint and Other Poems (Dublin: Gill 1949); Stirabout Lane (Dublin: Talbot; London: Dent 1955), for children.
Comic sketches, Here’s Their Memory (Dublin: Talbot 1941); Can’t Help Laughing (Dublin: Talbot 1944); I Laugh to Think (Dublin: Talbot 1946); It Stands to Reason: The Intelligent Rabbit’s Guide to Golf (Dublin: Talbot Press 1947); Do., enkl. edn. (Dublin: Talbot 1963); Half in Earnest (Dublin: Talbot 1948); My Hat Blew Off (Dublin: Talbot; London: Dent 1950); The Rest Is Silence (London: Dent 1953); While the Humour is On Me (Dublin: Talbot 1954); ; Funnily Enough (Dublin: Talbot/London: Dent 1956); Bright Intervals (Dublin: Talbot; London: Dent 1958); God Made Little Apples (Dublin: Talbot; London: Dent 1964); Joking Apart (Dublin: Talbot; London: Dent 1964) [infra]; Include Me Out (Dublin: Talbot 1967). Miscellaneous, James Clarence Mangan (Dublin: Talbot; London: G. Duckworth 1937). Also ‘Writers and Censors’, in Irish Monthly (June 1953).
Bibliographical details
Joking Apart (Dublin: Talbot Press; J. M. Dent & Sons 1964), ill. Paul Noonan, 202pp. [to the other eight, form the eldest of nine]. CONTENTS: At the Airport; A Felon of Our Land; City Pigeons; Allegories on the Banks of the Nile; A Little Rinse; The Old Shop; From My Sick Bed; The Christmas Pudding; Young Man in a Pram; The Musicianer; Looking into Other People’s Gardens; Spreading the News; The Square on the Hypotenuse [sic]; From Naples with Love; Fishing from the Pier; On Paper Hats; On Poodle; Arctic Memories; The Last Train from Cashelnagore; A Drop of Crathur; One-and-Twenty; The Laws of Rugby Football; On Candles; Fasten Your Seat Belts; The Stirring Boy; The Starry Heavens; Caste Drinking; The Quiet Land; Now I Lay Me; Once in David’s Royal City; Different Kinds of Dogs; The Slop Man; The Little Snooze; Still Threshing; Sweep Old and New; The Decline of the Overcoat; Night Watchman; Bees Plain and Coloured; Bach and Beethove; Making a Rug; Brids at the Milk; Witchcraft; Each in his Narrow Cell; Garages Old and New; The Winter Trees. Frontpapers lists under Humour, I Can’t Help Laughing; I Laugh to Think; Half in Earnest; My Hat Blew Off (Dent); The Right Time (Dent); While the Humour is on Me (Dent); Funnily Enough (Dent); It Stance [sic] To Reason; The Intelligent Rabbit’s Guide to Golf; Bright Intervals. Fiction, Vanishing Spring; Here’s Their Memory; The Magnificent MacDarney (Dent); The Rest is Silence (Dent); God Made Little Apples (Dent). Biography, James Clarence Mangan (Dent). Verse, Joe’s No Saint; Stirabout Lane [for ‘young folk’].
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References
Belfast Public Library holds Funnily Enough (1950); I Can’t Help Laughing (1944); I Laugh to Think (1946); James Clarence Mangan (1937); Magnificent MacDarney (1950); My Hat Blew Off (1950); Paradise Alley (1945); The Rest is Silence (1953); The Right Time (n.d.); While the Humour is On Me (1954).
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Notes
‘Writers and Censors’, in Irish Monthly (June 1953): Sheridan justifies the Irish censuring of Greene’s End of the Affair but admits limits to Irish puritanism in fiction-writing; article rep. from Books on Trial ( Chicago, Jan-.Feb. 1953).
Benedict Kiely, Drink to the Bird (London: Methuen 1991),writes that ‘John Desmond Sheridan, a good humourous writer, once said that at school he suffered a lot from and for trigonometry and then, when he left school, he found that all the lighthouses were measures [i.e., already]’. (p.73.)
James Joyce: In the 1960s, following the successful suit against the BBC by Reuben J. Dodd on the head of Joyce’s treatment of his [or his father?] in Ulysses, John D. Sheridan advised Emmanuel Altman, the son of Albert Altman, whom Sheridan believed to be the model for Leopold Bloom, to take a similar action - but the matter was not proceeded with as Emmanuel was not interested in anything to do with Ulysses. (See Altman, under Joyce > Notes People - supra.)
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