One of the Twentieth Century's great Irish storytellers, Walsh's stories are romances of a country intimately known, and well loved, while not avoiding the political conflicts. Caledonia will be sharing short stories from his collected works, among the best known of which is The Quiet Man.
MAURICE WALSH (Author, 1879-1964) Born in Ballydonoghue, Co. Kerry, Maurice Walsh entered the British civil service in 1901, and was appointed to the excise department in the Highlands of Scotland. When Ireland became a Free State in 1922, Walsh returned to Ireland to help build the customs and excise service of the new State. His first novel, The Key Above the Door, was published in 1923. Walsh went on to write twenty novels and many short stories, the most famous of which is The Quiet Man, which first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1933. Walsh set the story in a collection of stories called Green Rushes two years later. Most of his stories are set either in the Highlands of Scotland or in County Kerry. Other popular novels written by Walsh are While Rivers Run (1926), The Small Dark Man (1929), Blackcock’s Feather (1932) And No Quarter (1937) and Sons of the Swordmaker (1938). His last collection of stories, The Smart Fellow, was written in 1964. Among Mr. Walsh’s legion of fans were J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan) and Ernest Hemingway, who reportedly regarded Walsh as the greatest of all storytellers.
Presented live in voice.