Muiris Ó Súilleabháin

The ruins of the house in which Muiris ÓSúilleabháin grew up on the Great Blasket Island. Muiris Ó Súilleabháin (; 19 February 1904 – 25 June 1950), anglicised as Maurice O'Sullivan, was an Irish author famous for his Irish language memoir of growing up on the Great Blasket Island and in Dingle, County Kerry, off the western coast of Ireland. It is his unique published work.

Writings (Twenty Years a-Growing) was published in Irish and English in 1933. As one of the last areas of Ireland in which the Irish language and culture had continued unchanged, the Great Blasket Island was a place of enormous interest to those seeking traditional Irish narratives. ÓSúilleabháin was persuaded to write his memoirs by George Thomson, a linguist and professor of Greek who had come to the island to hear and learn the Irish language. It was Thomson who encouraged him to join the Gardaí (police) rather than emigrate to America as most of the young people of the island did. Thomson edited and assembled the memoir, and arranged for its translation into English with the help of Moya Llewelyn Davies.

While was received with tremendous enthusiasm by critics, including E.M. Forster, their praise at times had a condescending tone. Forster described the book as a document of a surviving "Neolithic" culture.

Personal life Following the death of his mother when he was six months old, ÓSúilleabháin was raised in an institution in Dingle, County Kerry. Aged eight, he returned to Great Blasket Island to live with his father, grandfather and the rest of his siblings, from whom he acquired an understanding of the Irish language. He joined the Garda Síochána in Dublin in 1927 and was stationed in the Gaeltacht area of Connemara, where he kept up contact with Thomson. In 1934, He left the Guards and settled in Connemara. ÓSúilleabháin drowned on 25 June 1950, while swimming at Knocknacarra off the Connemara coast.

Unique published work and its translations