Sean O'Casey, Irish dramatist, 1880-1964

Seán O'Casey, born John Casey, was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes. O'Casey's first accepted play, "The Shadow of a Gunman", was performed at the Abbey Theatre in 1923. The play deals with the impact of revolutionary politics on Dublin's slums. It was followed by "Juno and the Paycock" (1924) and "The Plough and the Stars" (1926). The former deals with the effect of the Irish Civil War on the working class poor of the city, while the latter is set around the 1916 Dublin Easter Rising. A collection of O’Casey’s letters from 1944 to 1962 is held at the Fales Library at New York University.