A Social and Cultural Biography of Thomas MacGreevy, Irish Poet, Art Historian, and Critic, 1893-1967

FAIN: FA-54332-08

Susan Schreibman
University of Maryland, College Park (College Park, MD 20742-5141)

I am applying for funding to write a biography of Thomas MacGreevy (1893-1967), Irish poet, critic, translator, art historian and Director of the National Gallery of Ireland (1950-1963). MacGreevy is one of the pivotal figures of Irish Modernism; his links with Irish, British, American and European writers, artists, art historians, and politicians was so extensive that an examination of his life provides a unique window onto cultural and artistic interconnections for the first three quarters of this century.This biography proposes to tell MacGreevy's story against a backdrop of the political, cultural, and social forces that shaped his life, drawing on a range of secondary sources, from contemporaneous accounts of the Royal Field Artillery during the Great War, to recent scholarship in modernism and Irish culture and society.