Seosamh Mac Grianna

Seosamh Mac Grianna (1900 – 1990) was an Irish writer, under the pen-name "Iolann Fionn". He was born into a family of poets and storytellers in Ranafast, County Donegal, at a time of linguistic and cultural change, which included his brothers Séamus Ó Grianna and Seán Bán Mac Grianna.

Education and early activities

He was educated at St. Eunan's College, Letterkenny, and St Columb's College in Derry. He trained as a teacher in St Patrick's College, Dublin, from which he graduated in 1921. He became ivolved in the armed struggle and was interned as a republican for fifteen months. He began a teaching career but, with his poetic and independent character, soon discovered that his vocation did not lie there.

Creative career

Mac Grianna started writing in the early 1920s, and his creative period lasted some fifteen years . He wrote essays, short stories, travel and historical works, a famous autobiography, "Mo Bhealach Féin", and a novel, as well as translating many books. He was imbued with a strong, oral traditional culture from his childhood, and this permeated his writings, particularly in the early years.

Latter career and death

Towards the end of his career, Mac Grianna grew increasingly analytical and critical as he examined the changing face of the Irish-speaking districts and the emergence of an Anglicised Ireland with no loyalty to, or sympathy with, a heroic and cultured past.

He was probably the greatest Gaeltacht writer of his time, whose work had developed considerably before he was stricken by a severe depressive psychosis in 1935. This was so severe that he had to spend the rest of his life – more than fifty years – in the psychiatric hospital in Letterkenny. [ [http://www.searcs-web.com/macgr.html SEARC'S WEB GUIDE - Seosamh MacGrianna (1900-1990) ] ]

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