Frank Tuohy

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John Francis "Frank" Tuohy (born May 2, 1925 in Uckfield , East Sussex ; died April 11, 1999 in Shepton Mallet , Somerset ) was a British literary scholar and writer. His third novel, The Ice Saints (1964), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize .

Life

Tuohy went to school at Stowe School , a prestigious private school in the historic Stowe House, northeast of Oxford . He then studied philosophy and English at King's College in Cambridge from 1943 to 1946 .

Tuohy had a hole in his heart from birth , which at that time could not be treated surgically. As a result, he had to live with the expectation of premature death; Tuohy's father, a doctor, thought it unlikely that his son could survive his second decade. Contrary to these fears, Tuohy lived long enough to finally be able to experience the possibility of open heart surgery and be healed as a 40-year-old. Francis King suspects in an obituary for Tuohy, however, that this physical limitation could have been a reason why Tuohy was not offered a permanent position at the British Council .

Instead, Tuohy's professional life as a lecturer in English language and literature at the British Council was unsteady and in a kind of “restless exile” at universities around the world. For example, the writer was a lecturer at the University of Turku in Finland from 1947 to 1948 , from 1950 to 1956 professor of English language and literature at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, and from 1958 to 1960 Tuohy worked as a contract lecturer at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow in Poland, 1964 to 1967 as a visiting professor at Waseda University Tokyo in Japan, afterwards Tuohy was represented several times (1970/71, 1976 and 1980) as visiting professor and writer in residence at Purdue University in Lafayette , Indiana, USA. from 1983 to 1989 he is back in Japan, as a visiting professor at Rikkyō University , Tokyo.

After a heart attack that Tuohy had in Northern Cyprus, friends brought him back to England, where he died at the age of 73.

plant

Tuohy left a relatively narrow literary work; three novels appeared in the 1950s and 1960s, each inspired by the writer's stays abroad: The Animal Game (1957) and The Warm Nights of January (1960) are set in Brazil, The Ice Saints (1964) are set in Poland. The Ice Saints won literary awards and helped Tuohy join the Royal Society of Literature . In addition, Tuohy published several volumes of short stories between 1960 and the mid-1980s, and for several years he wrote a biography of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats , which he published in 1976. Tuohy was recognized as a writer as well as a literary scholar, but he never became so successful that he could have made a living from his works. The struggle for the right words and the precise narrative structure of his works were seen as hallmarks of his art. The high standards with which, as a literary critic, he measured the works of others, he also applied to himself; this eventually led to writer's block and gradually falling silent as a writer. After The Ice Saints , Tuohy did not publish another novel, and the last volume of short stories appeared in 1984. Tuohy wrote another novel in the last 20 years of his life, but was unable to complete it.

Awards

Publications (selection)

Novel :

  • The Animal Game . Macmillan, London, and Scribner, New York 1957.
  • The Warm Nights of January . Macmillan, London 1960.
  • The Ice Saints . Macmillan, London, and Scribner, New York 1964.

Narration / short story :

  • The Admiral and the Nuns with Other Stories . Macmillan, London 1962; Scribner, New York 1963.
  • Fingers in the door . Macmillan, London, and Scribner, New York 1970.
  • Live Bait and Other Stories . Macmillan, London 1978; Holt Rinehart, New York 1979, ISBN 978-0-03-043636-9 .
  • The Collected Stories . Macmillan, London, and Holt Rinehart, New York 1984, ISBN 978-0-03-057648-5 .

Biography :

  • Yeats . Macmillan, London 1976; Reissued as Yeats: An Illustrated Biography , Herbert Press, London 1991, ISBN 978-1-871569-32-2 .

Travel literature :

  • Portugal . Thames and Hudson, London, and VikingPress, New York 1970.
    German: Portugal . Translated into German by Aurelia Bundschuh, Atlantis-Verlag, Zurich, Freiburg im Breisgau 1970.

literature

Web links

Unless otherwise noted: All web links in this section were last accessed on July 23, 2016.

Remarks

Unless otherwise noted: All web links in this section were last accessed on July 23, 2016.

  1. ^ WJ Stuckey: Tuohy, Frank , The Columbia Encyclopedia , Sixth Edition, Columbia University Press, New York 2008. (www.encyclopedia.com).
  2. ^ "Moral Sciences and English", Francis King: Obituary: Frank Tuohy , The Independent , April 15, 1999 (obituary).
  3. ^ Francis King: Obituary: Frank Tuohy , The Independent , April 15, 1999 (obituary).
  4. ↑ Denis McShane: Frank Tuohy , The Guardian , April 19, 1999 (obituary).
  5. ↑ Data from WJ Stuckey: Tuohy, Frank , The Columbia Encyclopedia , Sixth Edition, Columbia University Press, New York 2008. (www.encyclopedia.com).
  6. ↑ Denis McShane: Frank Tuohy , The Guardian , April 19, 1999 (obituary).
  7. ↑ Denis McShane: Frank Tuohy , The Guardian , April 19, 1999 (obituary).
  8. ^ Francis King: Obituary: Frank Tuohy , The Independent , April 15, 1999 (obituary).
personal data
SURNAME Tuohy, Frank
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tuohy, John Francis (maiden name); Tuohy, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 2, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Uckfield
DATE OF DEATH April 11, 1999
Place of death Shepton Mallet