O'Sullivan, Seamus

(1879-1958)

   He was born James Sullivan Starkey, in Dublin, and spent most of his adult life in the affluent Dublin suburb of Rathgar, where his father, William Starkey (1836-1918), was a doctor. He edited The Dublin Magazine from August 1923 to August 1925 as a monthly and from January 1926 to June 1958 as a quarterly, ceasing publication on O'Sullivan's death. The magazine featured fiction, poetry, drama and reviews; contributors included almost every significant Irish writer of the period, including Samuel Beckett and Patrick Kavanagh (see entries). Some of his poems: "A Blessing on the Cows," "The Convent," "The Half Door," "Lament for Sean MacDermott," "The Sedges," "Splendid and Terrible," "The Starling Lake," "The Trains."

   Sources: A Book of Animal Poems. William Cole, ed. Viking, 1973. An Anthology of Irish Verse: The Poetry of Ireland from Mythological Times to the Present. Padraic Colum, ed. Liveright, 1948. Poems One Line and Longer. William Cole, ed. Grossman, 1973. Reference.com/Encyclopedia/The Dublin Magazine (http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/The_Dublin_Magazine). The Book of a Thousand Poems: A Family Treasury. J. Murray Macbain, ed. Peter Bedrick Books, 1983. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Home Book of Modern Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. Henry Holt, 1953. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).