Monday the 12th
Louis MacNeice Books
Blind Fireworks (1929), , Poems (1935) , Letters from Iceland (1937, with W H Auden, poetry and prose) , The Earth Compels (1938) , Autumn Journal (1939) , The Last Ditch (1940) , Plant and Phantom (1941) , Springboard (1944) , Holes in the Sky (1948) , Collected Poems, 1925-1948 (1949) , Ten Burnt Offerings (1952) , Autumn Sequel (1954) , Visitations (1957) , Solstices (1961) , The Burning Perch (1963) , Selected Poems (1964, edited by W. H. Auden) , Collected Poems (1966, edited by E. R. Dodds) , Selected Poems (1988, edited by Michael Longley) , The Agamemnon (1936, translation of Aeschylus) , Out of the Picture (1937) , Christopher Columbus (1944, radio) , He Had a Date (1944, radio) , The Dark Tower (1946, radio) , Faust (1949, translation of Goethe) , The Administrator (1961, radio) , The Mad Islands (1962, radio) , Persons from Porlock (1963, radio) , Prayer before Birth , Roundabout Way (1932) , The Sixpence That Rolled Away (1956)
Louis MacNeice Links
Louis MacNeice 1907-1963
Site http://members.aol.com/carrickman/macneice.htm
MacNeice was born in Belfast in 1907 to parents originally from Connemara in the West of Ireland. In 1909 they moved to Carrickfergus due to the appointment of MacNeice’s father as rector for the anglican Church of Ireland here in the town. At the age of ten he was sent to school in Dorset. MacNeice went on to study classics at Oxford becoming a close friend and poetic contemporary of W.H. Auden. Living in England, he published many volumes of poetry, criticism and journalistic articles and worked for the BBC from 1941 to 1961. Born in pre-partition Ulster, the son of an Irish nationalist and bourgeois Protestant family, MacNeice chose to live in England where he experienced a great sense of alienation, as he did in Ireland, both North and South.
Literary Encycopedia: Louis MacNeice
Site http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2868
Louis MacNeice was born in Belfast, the son of a Church of Ireland clergyman who supported Home Rule; his presence recurs in MacNeice's poems. “The real strength and warmth of Louis' feeling for his father, deeper than all irritations ”, E. R. Dodds writes, is apparent in poems such as “Woods”, which begins, “My father who found the English landscape tame”. Of equal importance for the young MacNeice was his mother, who, like his father, came from the west of Ireland, which became for MacNeice as for Yeats an image of the good place. MacNeice's mother suffered gynaecological problems, a mental breakdown, which meant she left the family to go into a nursing-home in 1913, and, finally, death from tuberculosis a year later. The loss of his mother at such an early age had a profound and lasting effect on MacNeice; his sister Elizabeth writes that “His last memory-picture of her walking up and down the garden path in tears seems to have haunted him for the rest of his life”.
Ulster History: Louis MacNeice
Site http://www.ulsterhistory.co.uk/louismcneice.htm
McNeice was born in Belfast in 1907, the son of a Church of Ireland clergyman who later became a bishop. Educated in England (Marlborough and Oxford), he lectured in Classics in Birmingham and London; his verse translation of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus is of high literary quality. In 1941 he joined the BBC Features Department and was responsible for many classic productions, including his own radio play The Dark Tower (with music by Benjamin Britten). He was for a short period in the 1950's Director of the British Institute in Athens. Along with Auden, Spender and Day Lewis, MacNeice formed the leading group of poets of the 1930's. His work is colloquial and ironic, but intellectually distinguished and informed by a real tragic sense. He casts an ironic eye on the politics of Ireland ("I was born in Belfast to the banging of Orange drums") but his love for the country always shines through. His most considerable work is Autumn Journal (1939), a meditation on Munich and the approach of war; but he is also the author of many notable short poems (e.g. The Sunlight In the Garden, Bagpipe Music). MacNeice died in 1963 from viral pneumonia, reputedly caught while he was exploring a cave for a projected radio programme. He is buried at the C. of I. church, Carrowdore, Co Down.
Irish Writers Online - Louis MacNeice
Site http://www.irishwriters-online.com/louismacneice.htm
Louis Macneice (1907-1963) was born in Belfast, brought up in Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim and educated in England. He studied Classics and Philopophy at Oxford and both of these subjects informed his poetry. He was known as a translator, literary critic, playwright, autobiographer, BBC producer and feature writer as well as poet. His major works are: The Dark Tower (for radio); Roundabout Way (fiction, using a pseudonym, Louis Malone); Blind Fireworks (Poetry 1929); Poems (1935); The Earth Compels (1938); Autumn Journal (1939); Plant and Phantom (1941); Springboard (1944); Holes in the Sky (1948); Ten Burnt Offerings (1952); Autumn Sequel (1954); Visitations (1957); Solstices (1961); The Burning Perch (1963); Persons from Porlock (1963).
Irish Writers Online - The Academy of American Poets
Site http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/755
Louis MacNeice was born on September 12, 1907, in Belfast, Ireland. He attended Oxford, where he majored in classics and philosophy. In 1930, he married Giovanna Ezra and accepted a post as classics lecturer at the University of Birmingham, a position he held until 1936, when he went on to teach Greek at Bedford College for Women, University of London. In 1941, he joined the British Broadcasting Company as a staff writer and producer. Like many modern English poets, MacNeice found an audience for his work through British radio. Some of his best-known plays, including Christopher Columbus (1944), and The Dark Tower (1946), were originally written for radio and later published.
Irish Writers Online - Poetry Archive
Site http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1559
Louis MacNeice (1907-1963) was a friend and contemporary of W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender at Oxford and his poetry has often been linked to their own. Whilst sharing certain characteristics with them, including a sharp political awareness, in recent years MacNeice's poetry has been re-evaluated on its own terms, particularly by a new generation of Northern Irish poets such as Michael Longley and Paul Muldoon who've acknowledged him as a major influence. MacNeice's family were from the West of Ireland but he was born in Belfast to a Protestant clergyman father and a mother whose mental illness and premature death disturbed MacNeice for the rest of his life. These early years were recalled later as a time of darkness and loneliness presided over by the strict figure of his father. MacNeice was sent to England for his schooling, to Marlborough, and he then went on to read classics at Oxford. His professional life began as a lecturer in classics but in 1941 he joined the BBC and for the next twenty years produced programmes for the legendary Features Department, including his own celebrated parable-play, The Dark Tower. He died from pneumonia in 1963 following an expedition to the pot-holes of Yorkshire to record sounds for a radio play.
Louis MacNeice (1907 - 1963)
Site http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Louis_MacNeice
Frederick Louis MacNeice was born in Belfast and lived from 1907 –1963; he was a notable British poet. He studied at Oxford at the same time as Auden, Stephen Spender, and Cecil Day-Lewis. His classical style was first expressed in Blind Fireworks from 1929. As a BBC writer for over twenty years, he created radio plays such as The Dark Tower. He lectured at various British universities, as well as Cornell University in the USA.
Louis MacNeice Grave
Site http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/macneice.htm
Louis MacNeice is buried in the Church of Ireland Church, Carrowdore, Co.Down, Northern Ireland. (Carrowdore is a small village on the Ards Peninsula on the east coast of Co. Down.)
Louis MacNeice
Site http://www.nndb.com/people/555/000114213/
Born: 12-Sep-1907 Birthplace: Belfast, Ireland Died: 3-Sep-1963 Location of death: London, England Cause of death: Pneumonia Remains: Buried, Carrowdore Churchyard, County Down, Ireland Gender: Male Religion: Anglican/Episcopalian Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight [1] Occupation: Poet, Playwright Nationality: Ireland Executive summary: Autumn Journal
"We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence."
W. B. Yeats, speech in the Irish Senate, June 11, 1925