Brinsley MacNamara, novelist and playwright, was in the center of that movement in realism which took place in Ireland from the second decade of this century and which led to the work of Liam O'Flaherty, Frank O'Connor, and Sean O'Faolin fiction and Lennox Robinson, T.C. Murray, and Sean O'Casey in drama. Opinion is divided as to whether MacNamara's main significance is as a novelist or as a playwright, but there can be no doubt of his prominence in the history of Irish theater as playwright, director at the Abbey Theatre, drama critic, and compiler of a handlist of Abbey plays.

Born in Hiskenstown, near Delvin, in county Westmeath, John Weldon adopted the stage name Brinsley MacNamara in 1910 and retained the pseudonym when he began to write plays. His father, James Weldon, was schoolmaster in nearby Killough, and here MacNamara got his formal education. In 1905 the family moved...