James Stephens (author)

James Stephens' birth is somewhat shrouded in mystery. Stephens himself claimed to have been born on the same day and same year as James Joyce (2 February 1882), whereas he is in fact probably the same James Stephens who is on record as being born at the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, on 9 February 1880, the son of Francis Stephens (c. 1840–1882/3) of 5 Thomas's Court, Dublin, a vanman and a messenger for a stationer's office, and his wife, Charlotte Collins (b. c. 1847).[2] His father died when Stephens was two years old, and when he was six years old, his mother remarried, and Stephens was committed to the Meath Protestant Industrial School for Boys in Blackrock[3] for begging on the streets, where he spent much of the rest of his childhood.[2] He attended school with his adoptive brothers Thomas and Richard (Tom and Dick) Collins before graduating as a solicitor's clerk. They competed and won several athletic competitions despite James' tiny stature (he stood 4'10" in his socks). He was known affectionately as 'Tiny Tim'. He was much enthralled by the tales of military valour of his adoptive family and would have become a soldier except for his height.

By the early 1900s Stephens was increasingly inclined to socialism and the Irish language (he spoke and wrote Irish) and by 1912 was a dedicated Irish Republican. He was a close friend of the 1916 leader Thomas MacDonagh, who was then editor of The Irish Review and deputy headmaster in St Enda's, the radical bilingual Montessori school run by PH Pearse and later manager of the Irish Theatre. Stephens spent much time with MacDonagh in 1911. His growing nationalism brought a schism with his adoptive family, but probably won him his job as registrar in the National Gallery of Ireland, where he worked between 1915 and 1925, having previously had an ill-paid job with the Mecredy firm of solicitors.

James Stephens produced many retellings of Irish myths. His retellings are marked by a rare combination of humour and lyricism (Deirdre, (a legendary figure), and Irish Fairy Tales are often especially praised). He also wrote several original novels (The Crock of Gold, Etched in Moonlight, Demi-Gods) based loosely on Irish wonder tales. The Crock of Gold in particular has achieved enduring popularity and has often been reprinted.[4]

Stephens began his career as a poet under the tutelage of poet and painter Æ (George William Russell). Stephens's first book of poems, Insurrections, was published in 1909. His last book, Kings and the Moon (1938), was also a volume of verse.[4]

Stephens's influential account of the 1916 Easter Rising, Insurrection in Dublin, describes the effect of the deaths by execution of his friend Thomas MacDonagh and others as being "like watching blood oozing from under a door".[5] Of MacDonagh he wrote:

No person living is the worse off for having known Thomas MacDonagh, and I, at least, have never heard MacDonagh speak unkindly or even harshly of anything that lived. It has been said of him that his lyrics were epical; in a measure it is true, and it is true in the same measure that his death was epical. He was the first of the leaders who was tried and shot.

Stephens later lived between Paris, London and Dublin. During the 1930s he was a friend of James Joyce, and they wrongly believed that they shared a birthday. Joyce, who was concerned about his ability to finish what later became Finnegans Wake, proposed that Stephens assist him, with the authorship credited to JJ & S (for "Jameses Joyce & Stephens", but also a pun on the popular Jameson Irish whiskey, made by John Jameson & Sons). The plan was never implemented, as Joyce was able to complete the work on his own.[4]

During the last decade of his life Stephens found a new audience through a series of broadcasts on the BBC.[4]