St. John Greer Ervine

St John Greer Ervine (28 December 1883 – 24 January 1971) was an Irish biographer, novelist, critic, dramatist, and theatre manager.

[1] He was the most prominent Ulster writer of the early twentieth century and a major Irish dramatist whose work influenced the plays of W. B. Yeats and Sean O'Casey.

[2] Ervine was born as John Greer Irvine in Ballymacarrett in east Belfast, in the shadow of the shipyards, to deaf-mute parents.

[2] In June 1913, Ervine was standing beside Emily Davison at The Derby and witnessed her being fatally injured by King George V's horse.

[2] Arnold Bennett hailed him as a playwright "unequalled" in England, with plays that "combined great skill, fine ideals, and perfect sincerity with immense popular success".

He also produced several major biographies, including of the Unionist leaders Craigavon and Carson, of William Booth, of Oscar Wilde and of George Bernard Shaw.

[9] Explaining the determination of his character Robert "Darkie" Dunwoody in his novel, The Wayward Man, to leave the city despite the ties that bind him, Ervine wrote "I have never met anyone who was not depressed by Belfast".

Patricia Craig proposes that it is an exemplar of "a kind of Edwardian realism nurtured in the shade of Arnold Bennett and John Galsworthy, and embodying a distinctive Ulster Protestant strain".