The Dublin poet James Clarence Mangan (1803-49) led a wretched life. Brutally treated by his alcoholic father, he worked first as a law scrivener and later as a cataloguer in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Worn out by poverty, alcohol, and probably opium, he succumbed to the cholera epidemic of 1849. His life and works are often compared to those of his American contemporary, Edgar Allan Poe. Yeats described Mangan as 'our one poet raised to the first rank by intensity' and James Joyce praised him as 'the most ...
Read More
The Dublin poet James Clarence Mangan (1803-49) led a wretched life. Brutally treated by his alcoholic father, he worked first as a law scrivener and later as a cataloguer in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Worn out by poverty, alcohol, and probably opium, he succumbed to the cholera epidemic of 1849. His life and works are often compared to those of his American contemporary, Edgar Allan Poe. Yeats described Mangan as 'our one poet raised to the first rank by intensity' and James Joyce praised him as 'the most significant poet of the modern Celtic world, and one of the most inspired singers that ever used the Lyric form in any country'. Poets and Poetry of Munster is his major collection of verse, and contains the best of his original poems, and his finest and most famous renderings from the Gaelic.
Read Less
