Brought up in poverty, O’Connor became a librarian and a director of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. He won popularity in the U.S. for short stories in which apparently trivial incidents illuminate Irish life. They appeared in volumes including Guests of the Nation (1931) and Crab Apple Jelly (1944) and in The New Yorker magazine. He also wrote critical studies on Irish life and literature and translations of Gaelic works of the 9th – 20th centuries, including the great 17th-century satire The Midnight Court (1945).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Short story collections
Guests of the Nation (1931), including the famous title story
Bones of Contention (1936), including the story “The Majesty of Law”, a short story adapted as an episode of the 1957 film The Rising of the Moon.
Crab Apple Jelly (1944)
The Common Chord (1947)
Traveller’s Samples (1951), including the classic story “First Confession”
The Stories of Frank O’Connor (1952), including the first publication of perhaps his most popular story “My Oedipus Complex”
More Stories by Frank O’Connor (1954)
Domestic Relations (1957)
A Set of Variations (1969)
The Cornet Player Who Betrayed Ireland (1981)
The Collected Stories (Edited by Richard Ellmann) (1981)
The Collar: Stories of Irish Priests (1993)
A Frank O’Connor Reader (1994)
Novels
The Saint and Mary Kate (1932)
Dutch Interior (1940)
Autobiography
An Only Child (1961)
My Father’s Son (1968)
Poetry from the Irish
The Wild Bird’s Nest (1932)
Lament for Art O’Leary (1940)
The Midnight Court (1945)
Kings, Lords, and Commons (1959)
The Little Monasteries (1963)
Irish history
The Big Fellow, biography of Michael Collins (1937)
Travel writing
Irish Miles (1947)
Leinster, Munster and Connaught (1950)
Criticism
The Road to Stratford, U.S. Title: Shakespeare’s Progress (196l)
The Mirror in the Roadway: A Study of the Modern Novel (1956)
The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story (1962)
The Backward Look: A Survey of Irish Literature (1967)
