Patricia Lynch
Patricia Lynch (1900-1972) was an influential Irish author, primarily known for her contributions to children's literature. Born in Cork City, Ireland, she was deeply shaped by her surroundings and the storytelling traditions of her homeland, particularly influenced by local seanchí. Lynch's formative years were marked by personal loss and the challenges of her family seeking financial stability, leading her to attend various schools across Ireland, Great Britain, and Belgium. Her journalistic endeavors began in London, where she became involved in the feminist movement and reported on significant events, including the Easter Rebellion in 1918, earning recognition from prominent figures like W. B. Yeats.
Lynch’s literary career blossomed after her marriage to socialist author Richard Michael Fox, producing over fifty works, with notable titles like "The Turf-Cutter's Donkey" earning critical acclaim and awards. Her writing is celebrated for its unique blend of Irish fantasy and elements of everyday life, significantly impacting subsequent generations of Irish writers. Lynch's legacy endures as an exemplar of how to weave the fantastical with the ordinary, enriching the landscape of Irish literature.
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Subject Terms
Patricia Lynch
Writer
- Born: June 7, 1900
- Birthplace: Cork City, Ireland
- Died: September 1, 1972
- Place of death: Monkstown, Dublin, Ireland
Biography
Patricia Lynch was born on June 7, 1900, in Cork City, Ireland, the daughter of Timothy Patrick Lynch, a businessman, and Nora (Lynch) Lynch. The city of Cork, its structure, and its landscapes, would become an important part of Lynch’s literary imagination. Like the hills near Belfast for C. S. Lewis, or the countryside around Birmingham for J. R. R. Tolkien, Cork became the lost good place that Lynch’s characters long to return to in her fiction.
Like Lewis and Tolkien, Lynch’s life became disrupted by the early death of a parent—in this case, her father. At one point, she was left in the care of a seanchí, or “shanachie,” a local storyteller. The influence of these storytellers on Lynch was immense. Also influential was her reading of E. Nesbit’s works during the many lonely periods which arose from her mother’s and brother’s absences as they sought her father’s supposed lost fortune. During these times, Lynch was placed in various convent and secular schools in Ireland, Great Britain, and Belgium.
After adolescence, Lynch became involved in journalism and in the nascent feminist movement in London; Sylvia Pankhurst, the famous suffragette leader, sent Lynch to Dublin to cover the Easter Rebellion in 1918. No less a figure than W. B. Yeats claimed that her writing was the first from an Irish point of view on the event. Moving back to Ireland, she married the socialist author Richard Michael Fox on October 31, 1922.
Although she had published two novels by 1930 (and one of them, The Cobbler’s Apprentice, won the Silver Medal at the Aonac Taitlean festival), it was not until The Turf- Cutter’s Donkey: An Irish Story of Mystery and Adventure (which won the London Junior Book award) appeared in 1935 that her writing became popular with both critics and public, both in Ireland and around the world. Jack B. Yeats provided the illustrations for the book, and Lynch’s works were advocated by Irish literary figures such as George Russell. She eventually produced more than fifty children’s books, and one of them, Fiddler’s Quest, won the Irish Women Writers’ Club award.
Lynch’s marriage lasted almost forty-seven years until Fox’s death in 1969; she died on September 1, 1972. Lynch’s writing remains important not only for the elements of characteristic Irish fantasy that it contains, but because of the way in which she combined it with the elements of quotidian, ordinary Irish life. Many Irish creative people have declared that Patricia Lynch’s books were the first to show them how the imaginary and the everyday could be blended into a distinctively Irish art.