ANTHONY CRONIN
PORTRAIT BY EDWARD MCGUIRE 1977
This website is created with the help and approval of Anthony and his family.
PORTRAIT BY EDWARD MCGUIRE 1977
This website is created with the help and approval of Anthony and his family.
THE END OF THE MODERN WORLD - ANTHONY CRONIN 2016
New Island Publishers ‘The sun, a crucible of nuclear rage, Knows nothing of such ends: Such a culmination Of history seen at sunset from the harbour, Meaningless, astonishing and simple.’ Since the original version of Anthony Cronin’s classic sequence, The End of the Modern World, first appeared in 1989, it has been acclaimed as one of the most singular achievements in twentieth-century Irish poetry. Revised and extended since then by the author, this new edition is the first time that this major work has been published in its entirety as a solo volume. Its publication allows Cronin’s psychic history of western civilisation to finally stand alone as a landmark work in its own light. Reviews ‘The End of the Modern World is the key text and Anthony Cronin’s finest achievement to date. Not in terms of length alone, though its sustained concentration stands in reproachful contrast to the work of many a slighter lyricist, but in its panoramic scope, the astonishing confidence with which it takes so much in its thematic stride, the range and depth of its knowledge and understanding, its grasp of how the world works, [and] its candour and humanity.’ – Derek Mahon, An Unflinching Gaze |
"Anthony Cronin is best known these days as a respected elder statesman of Irish arts and letters. But, in the immediate post-war years he was, along with playwright Brendan Behan, novelist and columnist Flann O’Brien and poet Patrick Kavanagh, a fully paid-up member of the Irish literary rat pack."
- Tony Murray, Director of the Irish Studies Centre at London Metropolitan University, researching in literary and cultural representations of the Irish diaspora. Anthony Cronin (born 1923 in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford; died 2016) is an Irish Poet, novelist, biographer, critic, commentator and arts activist. Anthony Cronin was the inspiration and a founding member of Aosdána and was elected its first Saoi (a distinction conferred for exceptional artistic achievement) in 2003. He was a member of its governing body, the Toscaireacht. As an arts activist, he persuaded Charles Haughey - the cultural and artistic adviser to the former Taoiseach - to found Aosdána and support struggling writers, composers and artists with the annuity known as the Cnuas. From 1966-68, he was a visiting lecturer University of Montana and from 1968–70, Poet in Residence at Drake University. He had a weekly discourse, 'Viewpoint', in the Irish Times from 1974–80. He has written biographies of Brian O'Nolan and Samuel Beckett. He was involved in organising the first ever Bloomsday celebration, and has produced television programmes including Between Two Canals and Flann O’Brien - Man of Parts. He lived in Dublin with his wife, fellow author Anne Haverty and contributed regularly to the Sunday Independent. |