Sean O'Casey - Autobiographies: I Knock at the Door ; Pictures in the Hallway ; Drums Under the Windows

by Seán O'Casey

In this first volume of Sean O'Casey's collected "Autobiographies", the author recreates his Dublin childhood and paints a portrait of Ireland from 1906 to Easter 1916.

Genres: Ireland, Memoir, Biography

672 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1992

About the author

Sean O'Casey was born in 1880 and lived through a bitterly hard boyhood in a Dublin tenement house. He never went to school but received most of his education in the streets of Dublin, and taught himself to read at the age of fourteen. He was successively a newspaper-seller, docker, stone-breaker, railway-worker and builders' labourer. In 1913 he helped to organise the Irish Citizen Army which fought in the streets of Dublin, and at the same time he was learning his dramatic technique by reading Shakespeare and watching the plays of Dion Boucicault. His early works were performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and Lady Gregory made him welcome at Coole, but disagreement followed and after visiting America in the late thirties O'Casey settled in Devonshire. He lived there until his death in 1964, though still drawing the themes of many of his plays from the life he knew so well on the banks of the Liffey. Out of the ceaseless dramatic experimenting in his plays O'Casey created a flamboyance and versatility that sustain the impression of bigness of mind that is inseparable from his tragi-comic vision of life.

He was a major Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.

Reviews

[Caoileann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sean O'Casey. What an amazingly appealing writter and man. You can't go wrogn with the combination of a tough upbringing in a most turbulent and rich period in history, and the kind consideration of this beautiful and fair mind. Argueably not the most enjoyable of reads, but certainly worthwhile I feel

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, poetic writing.

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was young I read many of O'Casey's books and loved them all!

This would be one of the better ones!......