Skip to content

Margaret Kelleher Mary And Paraic Colum: Lives And The Dream

€25.00

New
Margaret Kelleher Mary And Paraic Colum: Lives And The Dream
Code 9781068502385

This meticulous and long-overdue excavation is the first joint biography of Mary and Padraic Colum, a literary power couple in Ireland and America who have been previously overlooked in early twentieth-century literary circles, which included..

Add to Basket
Description

Binding: Paperback

Date Published: 01 Sep 2026

Mary Colum was an influential reviewer and critic, feared for her rapier wit by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Her husband Padraic Colum was a successful author of children's stories, a poet, playwright and essayist, and like Mary a political activist. But now, in the histories of Irish literature and of New York literary circles, Mary and Padraic Colum are unjustly forgotten.

Drawing from a wealth of previously unknown archival materials, this work provides a close-up study of a writing couple whose literary lives and legacy spanned decades and continents. It follows their journeys from rural Ireland to literary Dublin, to the hotbed intellectual and literary life of wartime and peacetime New York, and James Joyce's emigre circle in 1930s Paris.

Mary and Padraic Colum is a chronicle of quiet friendship, romantic bonds, a longstanding marriage, and a fruitful intellectual partnership. The first joint biography of the Colums, it is a story of lives and dreams that deserves to be heard and celebrated.

About the Author

Margaret Kelleher is Chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at University College Dublin. Her book The Maamtrasna Murders: Language, Life and Death in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (UCD Press, 2018) was awarded the Michael J. Durkan Prize for Books in Language and Culture and was shortlisted for the Michel Deon Prize. She was UCD's academic lead for the creation of the Museum of Literature Ireland, a Cullman Center Fellow at New York Public Library (2022-3) and Parnell Fellow in Irish Studies at Magdalene College, Cambridge (2023-4).

Delivery Info

We provide FREE delivery in the Republic of Ireland when you spend €49 or more. 

FREE Click & Collect from The Ennis Bookshop. You will not be charged for this service.  We are happy to arrange Delivery outside Ireland. Please e-mail us at enquiries@ennisbookshop.ie for more information. 

Find out more about our Delivery & Collection services

Returns Policy

We want you to be completely satisfied with your order and we would hope to resolve any problems you may have. If you are unhappy with your purchase, we will exchange or refund the item or issue a credit note, providing the goods are not damaged and all packaging is still intact.

Terms and conditions apply.

Please view our full Returns Policy for further information.

Back to results page
Click to view complete product details

More Like This


'This highly original account of the extraordinarily rich and varied lives of Mary and Padraic Colum is not just welcome, but, given the magnitude of their legacy, an urgent rectification.'
- Barry McCrea, Donald R. Keough Family Professor of Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame

'Told with subtlety and a keen eye for telling details, this biography is a touching portrait of a marriage, of lives lived in hardship among the elite of the New York scene, and of successes and disappointments in equal measure. It will be of interest to anyone who cares about how Irish literature became the toast of the world in the twentieth century.'
- Coilin Parsons, Director of the Global Irish Studies Initiative, Georgetown University

'Fluently written and meticulously researched, this outstanding biography flows as compellingly as a novel. Kelleher achieves what is a hallmark of great biography: she conveys a picture of what her subjects 'were like', and the characters of Mary and Padraic Colum come luminously alive on her pages.' - Eilis Ni Dhuibhne, Laureate for Irish Fiction (2025-8)

Close

POP-IN HTML goes here

Close

Your Basket

Your basket is currently empty