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- 10 February 1958 (Creation)
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1 item
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Biographical history
Edward Patrick McGrath was born in New York City on 8 December 1929, the son of Edward Patrick McGrath and Elizabeth née Breen. His parents had emigrated to the United States from Belfast. He received a bachelor’s degree from New York University in 1958 and a master’s degree from Brooklyn College in 1960.
Edward McGrath began his career in journalism at the New York Herald Tribune in the 1950s. Over the years, he worked in publishing and public relations. During the final twelve years of his life he was president of McGrath Associates, a corporate communications consulting firm. Edward was also a writer. His published non-fiction works included articles on such far-ranging subjects as whaling and witchcraft. He had an interest in Irish literature and wrote fiction for personal pleasure. In 1974, Edward and his wife moved from New York City to Weston, Connecticut where among other things he held the position of chairman of the Library Board. Edward McGrath died in Weston on 23 August 1994.
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Postcard from Marvin Magalaner, writer and Joyce biographer, Flushing, New York, in which he discusses possible reasons why George Roberts of Maunsel & Co. Ltd, publishers, ‘got cold feet’ when it came to publishing Joyce’s Dubliners. States that some people suspect Roberts’ wife ‘engineered the dumping’. Also notes that previously Grant Richards had refused to publish as he was ‘afraid to stick his neck out’ after the [Oscar] Wilde ‘fiasco’. Suggests to McGrath to try Richard Ellman, a biographer of Joyce.
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- English