James Stephens

Poet and storyteller James Stephens was born in Dublin and grew up in abject poverty. He claimed to share a birthday with James Joyce whom he had met on one of Joyce's last visits to Ireland in 1912. Stephens began his career as a poet under the tutelage of Æ and his first collection of poems, Insurrections, was published in 1909. His first novel, The Charwoman's Daughter, was published in 1912, as was the subsequent work, The Crock of Gold. The latter achieved enduring popularity and won Stephens the Polignac Prize in 1913. Stephens understood Ireland's cultural heritage and, in particular, its myths as the key to understanding the nation's psychology and loosely based later works such as The Demi-Gods and Deirdre on Irish tales. His disapproval of Ireland's neutrality during the Second World War led him to emigrate to England where he worked as a broadcaster for the BBC. James Stephens died in 1950.