patrick kavanagh

Patrick Kavanagh was born 21st October 1904 in Iniskeen, County Monaghan. He was educated locally and later worked on his father's farm which he described in some of his works.
Kavanagh's first book "Ploughman and other Poems" was published in 1938, followed by two novels "The Green Fool" and "Tarry Flynn", both considered to be classics.

The following year Kavanagh went to Dublin where he supported himself as a literary journalist contributing articles the "The Bell", "Envoy" and the "Dublin Magazine". He also spent some time writing as film critic for the "Irish Press" under the alias "Piers Plowman" and through the friendship of John Betjeman, then British press attache in Dublin, he went on to do some work for the BBC.
He wrote "The Great Hunger" in 1941 which dealt with the hard views of rural life. Some years later Kavanagh with his brother Peter published "Kavanagh's Weekly", a journal which concentrated on politics and literature, which survived 13 issues.

A profile of Kavanagh was published in "The Leinster Leader" in 1952, which angered Kavanagh and led to him taking a successful libel action against the paper.