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J. M. Synge

  • John Millington Synge
Sort Name
Synge, J. M.
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Type
Person
Gender
Male
Date of birth
1871-04-16
Place of birth
Dublin
Date of death
1909-03-24
Place of death
Dublin

Wikipedia

Edmund John Millington Synge (; 16 April 1871 – 24 March 1909) was an Irish playwright, poet, writer, collector of folklore, and a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival. His best-known play The Playboy of the Western World was poorly received, due to its bleak ending, depiction of Irish peasants, and idealisation of patricide, leading to hostile audience reactions and riots in Dublin during its opening run at the Abbey Theatre, which he had co-founded with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory. His other major works include In the Shadow of the Glen (1903), Riders to the Sea (1904), The Well of the Saints (1905), and The Tinker's Wedding (1909).

Synge came from a wealthy Anglo-Irish background who mainly wrote about working-class Catholics in rural Ireland, and what he saw as the essential paganism of their worldview. Owing to his ill health, he was schooled at home. His early interest was in music, leading to a scholarship and degree at Trinity College Dublin, and he went to Germany in 1893 to study music. In 1894 he moved to Paris where he took up poetry and literary criticism and met Yeats, and returned to Ireland.

Synge suffered from Hodgkin's disease. He died aged 37 from Hodgkin's-related cancer while writing what became Deirdre of the Sorrows, considered by some as his masterpiece, though unfinished during his lifetime. His relatively few works are widely regarded as of high cultural significance.

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Annotation

Irish playwright and poet.

Last modified: 2023-02-25 (revision #122285)

Editions

NameFormatISBNRelease Date
The Playboy of the Western World (1960 Methuen edition)Hardcover?1960
The Playboy of the Western WorldeBook?2020-02-26
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Identifiers

Goodreads Author ID
4332478
ISNI
0000000121302786
LibraryThing Author
syngejm
MusicBrainz Artist ID
5ad0d866-887b-4729-9ebf-91d137ee6cac
OpenLibrary Author ID
OL26405A
VIAF
44305889
Wikidata ID
Q213447

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Last Modified
2024-09-29