FAGAN, Patrick 1922-

(Pádraig Ó Fágáin)

PERSONAL:

Born March 2, 1922, in Crooked Wood, Westmeath, Ireland; son of Thomas (a farmer) and Anna Maria (a homemaker; maiden name, Duffy) Fagan; married Mary Brigid Jones (a nurse), September 26, 1959; children: Geraldine, Desmond, Helen. Ethnicity: "Irish." Religion: Roman Catholic.

ADDRESSES:

Home—77 Ballytore Rd., Rathfarnham, Dublin 14, Ireland. E-mail—pjjfagan@eircom.ie.

CAREER:

Irish Civil Service, worked in Department of Agriculture and Department of Industry and Commerce, c. 1940-82, retired as principal officer; writer, 1982—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Honorary D.Litt., National University of Ireland.

WRITINGS:

(Under name Pádraig Ó Fágáin) Éigse na hiarmhí (in Irish; on Gaelic poets from Westmeath), privately printed, 1985.

The Second City: Portrait of Dublin, 1700-1760, privately printed, 1986.

A Georgian Celebration: Irish Poets of the Eighteenth Century, privately printed, 1989.

Dublin's Turbulent Priest: Cornelius Nary, 1658-1738, Royal Irish Academy (Dublin, Ireland), 1991.

An Irish Bishop in Penal Times: The Chequered Career of Sylvester Lloyd, OFM, 1680-1747, Four Courts Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1993.

(Editor) Ireland in the Stuart Papers, two volumes, Four Courts Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1995.

Divided Loyalties: The Question of the Oath for Irish Catholics in the Eighteenth Century, Four Courts Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1997.

Catholics in a Protestant Country: The Papist Constituency in Eighteenth-Century Dublin, Four Courts Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1998.

The Diocese of Meath in the Eighteenth Century, Four Courts Press (Dublin, Ireland), 2001.

Author of View from Mount Pelier (poetry in English) and a collection of short stories in Irish.

SIDELIGHTS:

Patrick Fagan told CA: "Prior to my retirement from the civil service, I had been engaged in my spare time in fiction writing in the Irish language and in English, resulting in the publication of a volume of verse in English, View from Mount Pelier, and a collection of short stories in Irish. Shortly after my retirement, however, I was bitten by the bug of historical and literary research. This latter became so all-consuming that I abandoned any aspirations I had as a fiction writer. I decided to specialize in the eighteenth century in Ireland because I always had a deep interest in the period. The volume of work (totaling well over 2,000 pages) I have produced in over twenty years of retirement speaks for itself. Much of my work I would claim to be groundbreaking in its re-assessment of the effects of the Papal Laws on Catholics and the Catholic experiences generally in Ireland in the eighteenth century. But coming from outside the charmed academic circles of the universities, my work as an historian and biographer is unlikely to be accorded the recognition I believe it deserves."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Church History, March, 2003, Stanford Lehmberg, review of The Diocese of Meath in the Eighteenth Century, p. 207.