St John [Greer] Ervine
Ervine, St John [Greer], born John Irvine (1883-1971), dramatist and novelist. The son of deaf-mutes in east Belfast, he moved to London, joining the Fabian Society out of admiration for George Bernard Shaw. His first play, Mixed Marriage (1911), a study of bigotry in his native city, was produced at the Abbey Theatre after a meeting with W. B. Yeats, and in 1915 he became manager of the theatre. During his time there he directed his own play, John Ferguson (1915), a study in Presbyterian rectitude, before his conflict with the company caused him to join the Dublin Fusiliers. He lost a leg from wounds in France and settled in Devon. Throughout the 1920s he wrote ephemeral West End comedies such as Anthony and Anna (1926) and The First Mrs. Fraser (1926). Of his realistic Belfast fiction one novel, The Foolish Lovers (1920), tells of a young man's affair with a policeman's wife, while another, The Wayward Man (1927), deals with low-life experience in New York. The plays Boyd's Shop (1936) and Friends and Relations (1941) present a warmer picture of his province.
