Life

His upbringing in a landed Catholic family in Celbridge

Celbridge

Celbridge is a town and townland on the River Liffey in County Kildare, Ireland. It is west of Dublin. As a town within the Dublin Metropolitan Area and the Greater Dublin Area, it is located at the intersection of the R403 and R405 regional roads....

, County Kildare

County Kildare

County Kildare is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Mid-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Kildare. Kildare County Council is the local authority for the county...

, Ireland, provided material for his first experimental novel, Langrishe, Go Down (1966). The book was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize

James Tait Black Memorial Prize

Founded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are among the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded for literature written in the English language and are Britain's oldest literary awards...

 for fiction and was later adapted as a BBC television film

Langrishe, Go Down (film)

Langrishe, Go Down, the novel by Aidan Higgins , was adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter, directed by David Jones, filmed for BBC Television in association with Raidió Teilifís Éireann, and first broadcast in September 1978 as a 90-minute BBC2 Play of the Week...

 by British playwright Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...

, in association with RTÉ

Raidió Teilifís Éireann

Raidió Teilifís Éireann is a semi-state company and the public service broadcaster of Ireland. It both produces programmes and broadcasts them on television, radio and the Internet. The radio service began on January 1, 1926, while regular television broadcasts began on December 31, 1961, making...

.

Various writings have been collected and reprinted by the Dalkey Archive Press

Dalkey Archive Press

Dalkey Archive Press is a publisher of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism in Illinois in the United States, specializing in the publication or republication of lesser known, often avant-garde works...

, including his three volume autobiography, A Bestiary, and a collection of fiction, Flotsam and Jetsam, both of which demonstrate his wide erudition and his experience of life and travel in South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 and London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 which gives his writing a largely cosmopolitan feel, utilizing a range of European languages in turns of phrase.

He now lives in Kinsale

Kinsale

Kinsale is a town in County Cork, Ireland. Located some 25 km south of Cork City on the coast near the Old Head of Kinsale, it sits at the mouth of the River Bandon and has a population of 2,257 which increases substantially during the summer months when the tourist season is at its peak and...

, County Cork

County Cork

County Cork is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and is also part of the province of Munster. It is named after the city of Cork . Cork County Council is the local authority for the county...

, and is a Saoi

Saoi

Saoi , is the highest honour that members of Aosdána, an association of people in Ireland who have achieved distinction in the arts, can bestow upon a fellow member...

 of Aosdána

Aosdána

Aosdána is an Irish association of Artists. It was created in 1981 on the initiative of a group of writers and with support from the Arts Council of Ireland. Membership, which is by invitation from current members, is limited to 250 individuals; before 2005 it was limited to 200...

.

Works

• Darkling Plains: Texts for the Air. Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2010.
• A Bestiary. Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2004.
• As I was Riding Down Duval Boulevard with Pete La Salle. Dublin: Anam Press, 2003.
• Balcony of Europe. London: Calder & Boyars, 1972; New York: Delacorte, 1972; Illinois, Dalkey Archive Press, 2010.
• Bornholm Night-Ferry. London: Allison & Busby; Ireland: Brandon Books, 1983; London: Abacus, 1985; Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2006.
• Dog Days: A Sequel to Donkey’s Years. London: Secker & Warburg, 1998.
• Donkey’s Years: Memories of a Life as Story Told. London: Secker & Warburg, 1995.
• Felo de Se. London: Calder & Boyars, 1960; as Killachter Meadow, New York: Grove Press, 1961; as *Asylum and Other Stories, London: Calder & Boyars, 1978; New York: Riverrun Press, 1979.
• Flotsam & Jetsam. London: Minerva, 1997; Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2002.
• Helsingor Station & Other Departures: Fictions and Autobiographies 1956-1989. London: Secker & Warburg, 1989.
• Images of Africa: Diary (1956–60). London: Calder & Boyars, 1971.
• Langrishe, Go Down. London: Calder & Boyars, 1966; New York: Grove Press, 1966; London: Paladin, 1987; Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2004; Dublin: New Island, 2007.
• Lions of the Grunewald. London: Secker & Warburg, 1993. Also as Weaver’s Women. London: Secker & Warburg, 1993.
• Ronda Gorge & Other Precipices: Travel Writings 1959-1989. London: Secker & Warburg, 1989.
• Scenes from a Receding Past. London: Calder, 1977; Dallas: Riverrun Press, 1977; Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2005.
• The Whole Hog: A Sequel to Donkey’s Years and Dog Days. London: Secker & Warburg, 2000.
• Windy Arbours. Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press, 2005.

Selected Criticism

Book

• Neil Murphy (Ed.) Aidan Higgins: The Fragility of Form (Essays and Commentary). Dalkey Archive Press, 2010.

Essays and Reviews

• Beja, Morris. “Felons of Our Selves: The Fiction of Aidan Higgins.” Irish University Review 3, 2 (Autumn 1973): 163-78.
• Buckeye, Robert. “Form as the Extension of Content: ‘their existence in my eyes’.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 3.1 (1983): 192-195.
• Wall, Eamonn. “Aidan Higgins’s Balcony of Europe: Stephen Dedalus Hits the Road.” Colby Quarterly Winter 1995: 81-87.
• Golden, Sean. “Parsing Love’s Complainte: Aidan Higgins on the Need to Name.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 3.1 (1983): 210-220.
• Healy, Dermot. “Donkey’s Years: A Review,” Asylum Arts Review Vol. 1, Issue 1, (Autumn 1995): 45-6.
• Healy, Dermot. “Towards Bornholm Night-Ferry and Texts For the Air: A Rereading of Aidan Higgins.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 3.1 (1983): 181-192.
• Imhof, Rüdiger. “Bornholm Night-Ferry and Journal to Stella: Aidan Higgins’s Indebtedness to Jonathan Swift.” The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, X, 2 (December 1984), 5-13.
• Imhof, Rüdiger, and Jürgen Kamm. “Coming to Grips with Aidan Higgins’s Killachter Meadow: An Analysis.” Études Irlandaises (Lillie 1984): 145-60.
• Imhof, Rüdiger. "German Influences on John Banville and Aidan Higgins", in: W. Zach & H. Kosok (eds), Literary Interrelations. Ireland, England and the World, vol. II: Comparison and Impact. Tübingen: Narr, 1987: 335-47.
• Kreilkamp, Vera. “Reinventing a Form: The Big House in Aidan Higgins’s Langrishe Go Down.” The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 11, 2 (1985): 27-38.
  • Reprinted in, Kreilkamp, Vera. The Anglo-Irish Novel and the Big House. New York: Syracuse University Press, October 1998: 234-60.
• Lubbers, Klaus. “Balcony of Europe: The Trend towards Internationalisation in Recent Irish Fiction,” in Zach & Kosok, eds. Tübingen: Gunter Narr 1987: 235-47.
• Mahon, Derek. “An anatomy of melancholy”: Review of Dog Days. The Irish Times, March 7, 1998: 67.
• Murphy, Neil. “Aidan Higgins.” The Review of Contemporary Fiction XXIII No. 3 (2003): 49-83.
• Murphy, Neil. “Dreams, Departures, Destinations: A Reassessment of the Work of Aidan Higgins.” Graph: A Journal of Literature & Ideas 1 (1995): 64-71.
• Murphy, Neil. “Aidan Higgins - The Fragility of Form” in Irish Fiction and Postmodern Doubt: An Analysis of the Epistemological Crisis in Modern Irish Fiction. NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004: 37-101.
• Murphy, Neil. “Review of Lions of the Grunewald.” Irish University Review 25.1 Spring/Summer 1995: 188-190.
• O’Brien, George. “Goodbye to All That,” The Irish Review 7 (Autumn 1989): 89-92.
• O’Brien, George. “Consumed by Memories”: Review of Donkey’s Years. The Irish Times 10 June 1995: W9.
• O’Brien, George. “On the Pig’s Back”: Review of The Whole Hog (2000), in The Irish Times 7 October 2000: 67.
• O’Brien, John. “Scenes From A Receding Past.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 1983 (Spring): 164-166.
• O’Neill, Patrick. “Aidan Higgins” in Rüdiger Imhof, ed., Contemporary Irish Novelists Studies in English and Comparative Literature, ed. Michael Kenneally & Wolfgang Zach Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag 1990: 93-107.
• Proulx, Annie. “Drift and Mastery”: Review of Flotsam & Jetsam. The Washington Post, June 16, 2002 Sunday: T07.
• Rachbauer, Otto. “Aidan Higgins, ‘Killachter Meadow’ und Langrishe, Go Down sowie Harold Pinters Fernsenfilm Langrishe, Go Down: Variationen eines Motivs,” in Siegfried Korninger, ed., A Yearbook of Studies in English and Language and Literature Vol. 3 (Vienna 1986): 135-46.
• Skelton, Robin. “Aidan Higgins and the Total Book,” in Mosaic 19 (1976): pp. 27–37;
  • Reprinted as Chap. 13 of Skelton, Robin. Celtic Contraries. NY: Syracuse UP, 1990: pp. 211–23.

External links

• Aidan Higgins fonds at University of Victoria, Special Collections