Title
Autograph letter from Brendan Behan to Gainor Christ
Date
January 30, 1958
Description
Playwright, storywriter, and memoirist, Brendan Behan was one of Ireland’s most original and notorious postwar literary personalities. He received wide acclaim for his plays The Quare Fellow and The Hostage as well as his memoir-novel Borstal Boy in 1958, all of which originated from his early IRA activity and subsequent incarceration. Heavy drinking and singing made him a pub-life celebrity, but he was famous for borrowing funds, as in this letter to his friend Gaynor Christ, the model for Sebastien Dangerfield in J. P. Donleavy’s 1955 novel, The Ginger Man. Behan died in 1964 at the age of forty-one.
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