Prodigals and Geniuses

Apart from the Left Bank in Paris, no other European city quarter boasts as many literary and artistic associations as Dublin's Baggotonia. Among its inhabitants and habitues were Nobel Prize winners Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, George Bernard Shaw and W.B. Yeats, as well as such notable writers as Oscar Wilde, Oliver St. John Gogarty, James Joyce, George Moore, Flann O'Brien and Brendan Behan, and artists Jack B. Yeats, Paul Henry and Mainie Jellett. Centred on Baggot and Leeson Streets and surrounding Georgian backwaters, Baggotonia is bounded by the Grand Canal and Stephen's Green. Short story virtuosi Mary Lavin, Frank O'Connor and Liam O'Flaherty lived beside the canal, which also features in the work of Beckett and Joyce. The Green hosts the famous studio occupied by portraitists Sir William Orpen and John B. Yeats. Written by award-winning author Brendan Lynch, who knew both Brendan Behan and Patrick Kavanagh, "Prodigals and Geniuses" is the first history of the quarter. It includes chapters on Behan, Kavanagh, Flann O'Brien, legendary "Irish Times" editor Robert Smyllie, neglected best-selling author Ernie Gebler and the original Ginger Man, Gainor Crist. Based on interviews and contemporary accounts, the book also features chapters on art, censorship, literary pubs, Parsons Bookshop and such 1950s causes celebres as the Pike Theatre prosecution and the Patrick Kavanagh libel case.