Thomas Flanagan
Thomas Flanagan was an American author and scholar, born on November 5, 1923, in Greenwich, Connecticut. He served in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II and pursued higher education, earning a B.A. from Amherst College, followed by an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Flanagan's academic career spanned several institutions, including teaching roles at Columbia University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he became a distinguished professor. He was known for his scholarly contributions, particularly his book *The Irish Novelists, 1800-1850*, and a posthumous collection of essays titled *There You Are: Writings on Irish and American Literature and History*.
In addition to his academic achievements, Flanagan was an accomplished fiction writer, recognized for his short stories in *Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine* and for his historical novels. His most notable work, *The Year of the French*, won the National Book Critics Circle award and explored pivotal moments in Irish history, such as the uprising against British rule. His subsequent novels, including *The Tenants of Time* and *The End of the Hunt*, further delved into Ireland's political struggles. Flanagan's writing is celebrated for its insightful portrayal of Irish literature and history, making him a significant figure in both academia and literature.
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Thomas Flanagan
Writer
- Born: November 5, 1923
- Birthplace: Greenwich, Connecticut
- Died: March 21, 2002
- Place of death: Berkeley, California
Biography
Thomas Flanagan was born on November 5, 1923, in Greenwich, Connecticut. He served in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II. He earned a B.A. degree at Amherst College in 1945, and then later attended Columbia University, where he received an M.A. in 1949 and a Ph.D. in 1958. He married Jean Parker on June 10, 1949, and they had two daughters.
Flanagan built two parallel and distinguished careers during his lifetime. He taught at Columbia University from 1949 to 1959 and, after earning his Ph.D., moved to the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a professor of English from 1960 to 1978. In 1978, he took a job at State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he taught until 1992 and was a distinguished professor from 1993 until his death in 2002. During his long academic career, he was chairman of the English department at the University of California at Berkeley from 1973 to 1976. He also produced a respected scholarly work, The Irish Novelists, 1800-1850 (1959). His collection of essays, There You Are: Writings on Irish and American Literature and History, was published posthumously in 2004.
While pursuing his academic career, Flanagan also earned a reputation as a fiction writer. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine selected “The Fine Italian Hand” as best short story of 1948 and “The Cold Winds of Adesta” as best short story of 1951. In 1962, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1979, Flanagan published the historical novelThe Year of the French, which was chosen as a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and later won the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction. The novel, which dealt with the Irish uprising against British rule at the end of the eighteenth century, was the first of a series of novels Flanagan would write about crucial periods in Irish history. The Tenants of Time (1988) focused on the aborted Irish uprising of 1867 and the political career of politician Charles Stewart Parnell, while The End of the Hunt (1994) brought the Irish struggles for independence into the twentieth century with depictions of the Easter uprising of 1916. The Year of the French was clearly Flanagan’s best novel, but all of his work has illuminated Irish literature and history in informed and lively prose.