Oliver St. John Gogarty

Description

Oliver Joseph St. John Gogarty, born in Rutland Square, Dublin, Ireland, was an Irish poet, author, otolaryngologist, athlete, amateur aviator, politician, and well-known conversationalist. He served as the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in James Joyce's novel Ulysses. In 1898 he went to the medical school at Trinity College in Dublin, where a serious interest in poetry and literature also began to manifest itself. Between 1901 and 1903, he won three successive Vice-Chancellor's prizes for verse. In 1900 he made the acquaintance of W. B. Yeats and George Moore and began to frequent Dublin literary circles. He also formed close friendships with other up-and-coming young poets, such as Seamus O'Sullivan and James Joyce. He passed his final medical examinations in June 1907, and in autumn of that year, Gogarty left for Vienna to finish the practical phase of his medical training. Returning to Dublin in 1908, Gogarty secured a post at Richmond Hospital. Three years later, he joined the staff of the Meath Hospital and remained there for the remainder of his medical career. Gogarty devoted less energy to his medical practice and more to his writing during the twenties and thirties. With the onset of World War II, Gogarty, who was an enthusiastic and talented amateur aviator, attempted to enlist in the RAF and the RAMC as a doctor. He was denied on grounds of age. He then departed in September 1939 for an extended lecture tour in the United States. When his return to Ireland was delayed by the war, Gogarty applied for American citizenship and eventually decided to reside permanently in the United States, and he never again lived in Ireland for any extended length of time. His primary American residence was in New York. Feeling that he was too old to sit for the medical examinations that would have qualified him as a practitioner in the United States, Gogarty instead chose to support himself entirely by his writing. In addition to various essays and short stories, his prose output included two period narratives composed with an eye to having them optioned as Hollywood films, and two loosely constructed memoirs. He also published two books of poems, and planned but never completed a collection of bawdy verse. Gogarty's literary output during the forties and fifties is generally considered to be inferior to his earlier writings. Source: [Wikipedia](