Francis Stuart

J. H. Natterstad

1974
85 pages
ISBN 0-8387-7895-X
Irish Writers Series

Francis Stuart is another outstanding contribution to the Irish Writers Series. These monographs have been designed to treat in individual volumes the significant Anglo-Irish writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Studies will prove helpful to both literary scholars and to students of literature. When complete the series will constitute a significant history of modern Anglo-Irish literature, and will encompass discussions of almost 40 writers.

In writing his critical biography of Francis Stuart-the first book-length study of his literary achievement-Professor Natterstad worked closely with his subject, interviewed friends and acquaintances, and had access to previously unavailable Stuart material. He explores not only the novels, poems, and plays, but also Stuart's childhood in Ireland and England, his uneasy marriage to Iseult Gonne, his relationship with Years and Maud Gonne, the turbulent years he spent in wartime Germany, and the psychological forces that shaped his art.

In the early 1930s Francis Stuart's fame seemed assured. W. B. Yeats was writing that :If luck comes to his aid he will be our great writer," and Compton Mackenzie was writing enthusiastic reviews of his novel in London's Daily Mail. But the fame never developed, and Stuart remains an unjustly neglected Irish writer.

About the author:

Born in 1938 in Urbana, Illinois, J. H. Natterstad graduated with honors from Southern Illinois University, where he also earned his Ph.D. Between 1961 and 1964 he served as an officer in the Air Force and taught English at the Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs. Following his release from the Air Force he studied at the University of Pennsylvania and New York University, and taught English at the University of Connecticut and at Southern Illinois University. He is now Assistant Professor of English at Framingham State college, Massachusetts.