Identity area
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Title
Date(s)
- 1980 and 1989 (Creation)
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2 items
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Michael Curtin was born in Limerick in 1942 and educated at the Sexton Street Christian Brothers’ school. In the 1960s, having spent five years working in a cement plant, he emigrated to London to try his hand as a writer. Finding no success, he returned to Limerick, where the broadcaster David Hanly encouraged him to continue writing. Several of Curtin’s short stories were subsequently published in the New Irish Writing column in the Irish Press and one of them took first prize at Listowel Writers’ Week in 1972. His first novel, The Self-Made Men, a partly autobiographical account of immigrant life in England, was published in 1980 by André Deutsch. Five further novels followed: The Replay (1981), The League Against Christmas (1989), The Plastic Tomato Cutter (1991), The Cove Shivering Club (1996), and Sing! (2001). Many of Curtin’s stories are set in his native city of Limerick and are characterised by a darkly comic tone, which became Curtin’s trademark. Michael Curtin died in his native city in April 2016.
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Content and structure area
Scope and content
Letters from Caradoc King, A. P. Watt Ltd., 26/28 Bedford Row, London WC1R 4 HL, and 20 John Street, London WC1N 2DR to Michael Curtin, c/o Andre Deutsch Limited, 105 Great Russell Street, London WC1, and 93 O’Connell Street, Limerick, offering his firm’s services as literary agents and refusing to take on the unsold rights in The League Against Christmas.
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Conditions of access and use area
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Language of material
- English