BIOGRAPHY
Frank O'Connor (1903-1966) was born Michael O'Donovan in Cork, Ireland. He later took the name Frank O'Connor as a pen name. His family's poverty forced him to leave school at age fourteen. O'Connor served in the Irish Republican Army during the civil war in Ireland that erupted after the 1922 treaty with Great Britain that resulted in the partitioning of Ireland into two states. The defeat of the IRA and the division of Ireland greatly disappointed O'Connor, feelings which are reflected in his first collection of stories Guests of the Nation (1931).

In the 1930s, O'Connor became director of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, during which time he also wrote several plays and a biography of Michael Collins, the leader of the Irish rebellion against the British. O'Connor published several collections of short stories during his lifetime and several others have been published posthumously, including Collected Stories (1981), The Collar: Stories of Irish Priests, (1993), and A Frank O'Connor Reader (1994). His work is marked by its literary realism and its depiction of Irish life. O'Connor was also a noted literary critic and translator of Gaelic poetry into English.