Guests of the Nation | Literary Criticism & Book Review

Guests of the Nation Critical Overview

Frank O'Connor, pseudonym of Michael O'Donovan, was a prolific writer whose output includes poetry, biography, essays, drama, novels, and short stories. It is his short stories that have made the biggest impact on literature, but as Michael L. Storey notes, his recognition as a top rated author has been slow to come because many critics were reluctant to put "short story writers into the same league with novelists, poets, and dramatists." Now this has changed.

However popular he is becoming now, things were not so positive at the beginning. For his early publications in The Irish Statesman, he used his middle name and his mother's maiden creating the name Frank O'Connor. He did this to separate himself from the reputation of his hard-drinking abusive father and for political reasons, to avoid connection with the Irish revolutionary, Jeremiah O'Donovan. His first volume of stories, Guests of the Nation, was published...
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