St John Greer Ervine (28 December 1883 – 24 January 1971) was an Irish biographer, novelist, critic, dramatist, and theatre manager.
He was the most prominent Ulster writer of the early twentieth century and a major Irish dramatist whose work influenced the plays of
W. B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...
and
Sean O'Casey
Sean, also spelled Seán or Séan in Irish English, is a male given name of Irish origin. It comes from the Irish versions of the Biblical Hebrew name ''Yohanan'' (), Seán (anglicized as ''Shaun/ Shawn/ Shon'') and Séan (Ulster variant; anglici ...
. ''The Wayward Man'' was among the first novels to explore the character, and conflicts, of Belfast.
Biography
Ervine was born as John Greer Irvine in
Ballymacarrett
Ballymacarrett or Ballymacarret () is the name of both a townland and electoral ward in Belfast. The townland is in County Down and the electoral ward is part of the Titanic district electoral area of Belfast City Council.
The ward was create ...
in east Belfast, in the shadow of the shipyards, to deaf-mute parents. Every member of his family had been born in County Down for 300 years. His father, a printer, died soon after his birth and the family moved in with Ervine's grandmother who ran a small shop. Ervine became an insurance clerk in a Belfast office at the age of 17 and shortly after he moved to London.
In London Ervine met
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
and began to write journalism as well as his first plays, adopting the name St John Ervine "as more fitting for his ambitions". His first full-length play, ''Mixed Marriage'', was produced by Dublin's
Abbey Theatre
The Abbey Theatre ( ga, Amharclann na Mainistreach), also known as the National Theatre of Ireland ( ga, Amharclann Náisiúnta na hÉireann), in Dublin, Ireland, is one of the country's leading cultural institutions. First opening to the pu ...
in 1911. It had several runs as one of the Abbey's most profitable plays. Yeats praised Ervine's plays for depicting the real life experienced by the people of the north of Ireland as Synge's work had done for those of the west of Ireland.
In June 1913, Ervine was standing beside
Emily Davison
Emily Wilding Davison (11 October 1872 – 8 June 1913) was an English suffragette who fought for Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, votes for women in Britain in the early twentieth century. A member of the Women's Social and Polit ...
at
The Derby and witnessed her being fatally injured by
King George V
George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.
Born during the reign of his grandmother Que ...
's horse.
In 1915 Yeats appointed Ervine as the Abbey's general manager. Ervine's tenure was a commercial success. The production of several successful comedies restored the theatre's finances. But Ervine's demands on the actors, combined with his outrage at the
Easter Rising
The Easter Rising ( ga, Éirí Amach na Cásca), also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans against British rule in Ireland with the a ...
of 1916, led to open conflict. Ervine resigned from the Abbey in 1916 and enlisted in the
Household Battalion
The Household Battalion was an infantry battalion of the British army during the Great War. It was formed in September 1916 from the reserves of the Household Cavalry regiments (the 1st Life Guards, 2nd Life Guards and the Royal Horse Guards) to ...
. On 1 January 1917 he was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant in the second reserve of the
Royal Dublin Fusiliers
The Royal Dublin Fusiliers was an Irish infantry Regiment of the British Army created in 1881, one of eight Irish regiments raised and garrisoned in Ireland, with its home depot in Naas. The Regiment was created by the amalgamation of two Brit ...
, and was transferred to a regular battalion on 1 August 1917. After being wounded in Flanders one of his legs had to be amputated. He was promoted to lieutenant on 1 February 1919 and relinquished his commission due to his wounds on 5 December 1919.
Through the 1920s and 1930s Ervine wrote drawing-room comedies that were box-office successes. Several had West End runs of up to two years, among them ''Anthony and Anna'' (1926) and ''
The First Mrs. Fraser'' (1929).
In 1936 Ervine's ''Boyd's Shop'', "the play that defined Northern Irish drama for decades", was produced.
Arnold Bennett hailed him as a playwright "unequalled" in England, with plays that "combined great skill, fine ideals, and perfect sincerity with immense popular success".
From 1919 to 1939 Ervine was also a theatre reviewer for ''
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
''.
Alongside his plays Ervine wrote a number of novels. Of these the most successful, ''The Wayward Man'' (1927), was reprinted in 1936 as one of
Allen Lane
Sir Allen Lane (born Allen Lane Williams; 21 September 1902 – 7 July 1970) was a British publisher who together with his brothers Richard and John Lane founded Penguin Books in 1935, bringing high-quality paperback fiction and non-fictio ...
's first Penguin paperbacks (Penguin 32). He also produced several major biographies, including of the
Unionist leaders
Craigavon Craigavon may refer to:
* Craigavon, County Armagh, a planned town in Northern Ireland
** Craigavon Borough Council, 1972–2015 local government area centred on the planned town
* Viscount Craigavon, title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom
** ...
and
Carson
Carson may refer to:
People
*Carson (surname), people with the surname
*Carson (given name), people with the given name
Places
;In the United States
* Carson, California, a city
* Carson Township, Fayette County, Illinois
*Carson, Iowa, a city
* ...
, of
William Booth
William Booth (10 April 182920 August 1912) was an English Methodist preacher who, along with his wife, Catherine, founded the Salvation Army and became its first "General" (1878–1912). His 1890 book In Darkest England and The Way Out outli ...
, of
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
and of
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
. ''Bernard Shaw: His Life, Work, and Friends'' (1956) was awarded the
James Tait Black Memorial Prize
The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Unit ...
in 1956.
Explaining the determination of his character Robert "Darkie" Dunwoody in his novel, ''The Wayward Man'', to leave the city despite the ties that bind him, Ervine wrote "I have never met anyone who was not depressed by Belfast".
Sean O'Faolain
Sean, also spelled Seán or Séan in Irish English, is a male given name of Irish origin. It comes from the Irish versions of the Biblical Hebrew name ''Yohanan'' (), Seán (anglicized as ''Shaun/ Shawn/ Shon'') and Séan (Ulster variant; angli ...
accounted Ervine "the only Belfast writer who has tried at all to bottle the 'realism' of the city". He suggested, however, that, "lacking poetry", Ervine "only succeeded in making it taste like reboiled mutton gone cold".
As "part of what might be called a programme for the reinstatement of certain neglected Northern Irish novelists", The Wayward Man was republished in 2014.
Patricia Craig proposes that it is an exemplar of "a kind of Edwardian realism nurtured in the shade of
Arnold Bennett
Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 – 27 March 1931) was an English author, best known as a novelist. He wrote prolifically: between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays (some in collaboratio ...
and
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy (; 14 August 1867 – 31 January 1933) was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include ''The Forsyte Saga'' (1906–1921) and its sequels, ''A Modern Comedy'' and ''End of the Chapter''. He won the Nobel Prize i ...
, and embodying a distinctive Ulster Protestant strain".
By the 1940s St John Ervine was Northern Ireland's leading writer but also a controversial figure with “a remarkable antipathy to southern Ireland".
He died in 1971.
Selected Plays
*''Mixed Marriage'' (1910)
*''The Magnanimous Lover'' (1912)
*''The Critics'' (1913)
*''Jane Clegg'' (1913)
*''The Orangeman'' (1914)
*''John Ferguson'' (1915)
*''The Island of Saints and How to Get Out of It'' (1920)
*''The Ship'' (1922)
*''The First Mrs. Fraser'' (1929)
*''Boyd's Shop'' (1936)
*''William John Mawhinny'' (1940)
*''Friends and Relations'' (1941)
*''My Brother Tom'' (1952)
*''Ballyfarland's Festival'' (1953)
*''Martha'' (1955)
A contemporary production of ''Mixed Marriage'' played at the
Finborough Theatre
The Finborough Theatre is a fifty-seat theatre in the West Brompton area of London (part of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea) under artistic director Neil McPherson. The theatre presents new British writing, as well as UK and world p ...
in London from 4 to 29 October 2011, to critical acclaim.
Novels
* ''Mrs Martin's Man'' (1914)
* ''Changing Winds'' (1917)
* ''Foolish Letters'' (1920)
*''The Wayward Man'' (1927) (2014, Turnpike Books, Dublin. )
See also
*
List of Northern Irish writers
This is a list of writers born or who have lived in Northern Ireland.
__NOTOC__
B
*Tony Bailie (born 1962)
*Jo Bannister (born 1951)
*Colin Bateman (born 1962)
* Ronan Bennett (born 1956)
*Maureen Boyle (born 1961)
*Kenneth Branagh (born 1960) ...
References
External links
St. John Greer Ervine Collectionat the
Harry Ransom Center
The Harry Ransom Center (until 1983 the Humanities Research Center) is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe for the pur ...
*
*
Extended profile*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ervine, St. John Greer
1883 births
1971 deaths
Male dramatists and playwrights from Northern Ireland
Male novelists from Northern Ireland
Writers from Belfast
James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients
20th-century novelists from Northern Ireland
20th-century British dramatists and playwrights
20th-century British male writers
Members of the Fabian Society
Royal Dublin Fusiliers officers
Presidents of the Critics' Circle