John Banim

John Banim

John Banim (* 3. April 1798 in Kilkenny , Ireland , † 13 August 1842 in Windgap Cottage in Kilkenny, Ireland) was an Irish writer who primarily by its on Walter Scott ajar Tales of the O'Hara Family (stories about the O'Hara family) liked it. He also chose the name Barnes O'Hara as a pseudonym . He was only 44 years old.

life and work

John Banim, son of a farmer and shopkeeper, tried his hand at verse and story at the age of ten. From the age of 13 he attended Kilkenny College and was particularly interested in painting and drawing. After two years of art studies in Dublin , where he also worked as a portrait painter, he returned to his hometown as a drawing teacher. His love affair with a drawing student was stopped by her parents; reportedly the young woman died of a broken heart after two months. In addition to tuberculosis , Banim's early death is also attributed to this misfortune, which deeply affected him. A year later he went back to Dublin in 1820 to pursue literary activities. In 1821 he wrote the patriotic poem The Celt's Paradise . His tragedy Damon and Pythias was successfully performed in Covent Garden (London) that same year . During a brief visit to Kilkenny, John married Banim and from 1822 he and his older brother Michael tackled the Tales of the O'Hara Family , which depict Irish folk life. In addition, the Catholic Encyclopedia notes that the respective shares of the brothers in this extensive narrative can hardly be determined. Her intention was to do the same for the Irish as Walter Scott's Waverley Novels gave the Scots: the true image of their national character with all the light and dark sides.

In 1822 John Banim went to London to make his fortune there. There he made money by writing for magazines and theaters. In 1824 he anonymously published the collection of essays Revelations of the Dead Alive . Then the first Tales of the O'Hara Family , when they first appeared in April 1825, won immediate acclaim. The included piece Crohoore of the Bill Hook is by Michael Banim; it was translated into German by Lucie Domeier in 1828 under the title Der Zwerg . In 1826 a second series of the Tales appeared . The novel The Boyne Water (1826) tells of the great crisis of 1690, to which Catholic Ireland succumbed. In The Denounced (1830) the time of the oppression of Ireland under William III. described.

In the meantime, however, John Banim's health deteriorated, so that the rest of the Tales of the O'Hara Family were written almost entirely by his brother. Soon he had to live in very modest circumstances. An attempt to improve his ailing health by traveling to France (1829) failed. While he was abroad, the English press, particularly John Sterling in The Times , sought to raise money for Banim to get him out of his greatest financial hardship, which attempt was crowned with success. In 1835 John Banim returned to his homeland to settle in a cottage on the outskirts of Kilkenny. In 1836, because of his illness and literary merit, the Irish government gave him a pension of £ 150, which was also used to help raise his daughter. Banim died in his Windgap Cottage on August 13, 1842. His brother Michael followed him in 1874, after business failures and further books.

For the Encyclopædia Britannica of 1911, the main achievement of the Banim brothers lies in the fundamental Tales of the O'Hara Family of the 1820s; all later works had turned out to be too rambling and were too obviously reminiscent of Scott's Waverly Novels . The passions and contradictions of the Irish peasant were seldom portrayed so truthfully and skilfully as in those first valley , which, in addition to often perplexing incidents, also had terrible events to offer. On the other hand, they paid little attention to the lighter, more cheerful side of the Irish character that appears so strong in Samuel Lover .

Works

Dramas

• Damon and Pythias , London 1821
• The Sargeant's Wife , London 1824

Poetry

• The Celt's Paradise , London 1821
• Chaunt of the Cholera: Songs for Ireland , London 1831

prose

• Revelations of the Dead Alive (Essays), London 1824
• Tales by the O'Hara Family , First Row, London 1825
  • The fetches
  • John Doe
• Tales by the O'Hara Family , Second Row, London 1826
  • The Nowlans (German translation by Adolf Wagner, Leipzig 1835)
  • Peter of the Castle (German Leipzig 1834)
• The Boyne Water , 1826
• The Anglo-Irish of the XIX. Century , London 1828
• The Denounced , London 1830
• The Smuggler , London 1831
• The Bit o 'Writin' and Other Tales by the O'Hara Family , London 1838
• Father Connell, by the O'Hara Family , London 1842
• The Works of the O'Hara Family, with foreword and notes by Michael Banim (anthology), Dublin 1865

(Some of the prose books together with Michael Banim!)

literature

• Patrick Joseph Murray: The Life of John Banim. London 1857. (New editions: Qureshri Press, 2008 and Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009)
• John Banim. In: The Illustrated Dublin Journal. Volume 1, Number 12, November 23, 1861. (full portrait) available on libraryireland.com , accessed January 9, 2011.
• Anna Steger: John Banim, an imitator of Walter Scott: (Based on the most important "O'Hara Tales".) Erlangen 1935. (University thesis)
• Further sources are listed on pgil-eirdata.org , accessed on January 9, 2011.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See this website , accessed January 9, 2011.
2. ↑ Quoted and translated from the English Wikipedia , see here , accessed on January 9, 2011.