Gerald Griffin
Griffin, Gerald (1803-1840), novelist and poet. Born and educated in Limerick, he left Ireland in 1823 with the ambition of becoming a dramatist but The Tragedy of Aguire, was rejected by William Macready. Gisippus (1842) was produced by Macready after his death. Impressed by the success of Tales by the O'Hara Family (1825) by his friend John Banim, he abandoned drama and produced Holland-Tide (1827), a set of regional stories. In 1829 he published The Collegians, a tale of crime and punishment which draws heavily on his familiarity with Irish Catholic society. Later novels include The Rivals and Tracy's Ambition (both 1829) and The Duke of Monmouth (1836). He also published further sets of stories: Tales of the Munster Festivals (1827), Tales of My Neighbourhood (1835), and the posthumous Talis Qualis, or Tales of the Jury Room (1842). Griffin's fiction provides portraits of peasant types with colourful and convincing idiom, accounts of the irresponsible Irish squirearchy, and didactic portrayals of Catholic families. Always moralistic in tendency, he became convinced of the futility of writing, burned his manuscripts (including Aguire) and joined the Christian Brothers in 1838 taking the name Brother Joseph. In 1839 he was transferred to the North Monastery in Cork, where he achieved as a religious the serenity which had eluded him before.
Bibliography
John Cronin, Gerald Griffin: A Critical Biography (1978).
