Padraic Colum

Padraic Colum, born Patrick Collumb on December 8, 1881, in Columcille, County Longford, Ireland, was a poet, playwright, folklorist, and children’s author. The oldest of eight children in a family struggling financially, Colum received only eight years of formal education. At seventeen, he passed an examination for a clerkship in the Irish Railway Clearing House where he worked until 1903. It was during this time that Colum began to write.

In the early 1900s, Colum joined the Gaelic League where he befriended the Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith who published several of Colum’s early poems in The United Irishman. He also, during these years, befriended writers such as W. B. Yeats, A. E. (the pseudonym of George William Russell), Lady Gregory, and James Joyce, the latter with whom he would go on to be lifelong friends. Colum, through his relationship with Yeats, was involved in the founding of the Abbey Theatre. His third play, The Land (1905), was one of the Abbey’s first great successes. Soon thereafter, Colum published his first book of poetry, Wild Earth (Maunsell & Company, 1907). Both his plays and his poems were celebrated for their depictions of Irish rural life.

A key figure of the Irish Literary Revival, Colum, alongside writer and critic Mary Gunning Maguire, was involved in the founding of The Irish Review, a short-lived journal that published the work of many influential Irish writers. In 1912, Colum and Maguire married, and, in 1914, moved to the United States. There, Colum turned his attention to children’s literature, writing many books of stories, fables, and myths. Among these titles are The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles (Macmillan, 1921), awarded a Newbery Honor; The Children of Odin: The Book of Northern Myths (Macmillan, 1920); and The King of Ireland’s Son (Henry Holt, 1916), the publication of which earned Colum a lucrative, long-term contract with Macmillan.

In addition to many more works of poetry and fiction, including Poems (Macmillan, 1932) and Creatures (Macmillan, 1927), Colum was involved in a variety of projects, from writing the screenplay for the 1954 stop-motion animated film Hansel and Gretel to assisting James Joyce with the transcription of Finnegans Wake. In 1952, Colum received the Academy of American Poets Fellowship after serving as a Chancellor from 1950 to 1951. His other honors include the Gregory Medal from the Irish Academy of Letters and the Regina Medal from the Catholic Library Association.

Colum died on January 11, 1972, in Enfield, Connecticut, and was buried in St. Fintan’s Cemetery, Dublin.