As a poet and literary critic, Thomas MacGreevy is a central force in Irish modernism and a crucial facilitator in the lives of key modernist writers and artists. The extent of his legacy and contribution to modernism is revealed for the first time in The Life and Work of Thomas MacGreevy. Split into four sections, the volume explains how and where MacGreevy made his impact: in his poetry; his role as a literary and art critic; during his time in Dublin, London and Paris and through his relationships with James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Wallace Stevens, Jack B Yeats and WB Yeats. With access to the Thomas MacGreevy Archive, contributors draw on letters, his early poetry, and contributions to art and literary journals, to better understand the first champion of Jack B. Yeats, and Beckett's chief correspondent and closest friend in the 1930s. This much-needed reappraisal of MacGreevy, the linchpin between the main modernist writers, fills missing gaps, not only in the story of Irish modernism, but in the wider history of the movement.

Introduction, Susan Schreibman Part I: MacGreevy as a Poet 1. Thomas MacGreevy's War Poems: Nocturnes, Gerald Dawe 2. MacGreevy's poetry in relation to perception in literary and visual arts: "it is the act and not the object of perception that matters", Mark Leahy 3. MacGreevy, Modernist Pathos, and the Poetics of Allusion: 'Quadrupedante, etcetera, Alex DavisPart II: MacGreevy as a Critic 4. Thomas MacGreevy, Art Critic and Art Historia: 'It is only by learning to fully understand the past that we can most easily come to realise the significance of the present', Riann Coulter 5. The Critical Voice of Thomas MacGreevy, A Matrix of Correspondences: Benjamin Keatinge 6. The Augustinian Imagination of Thomas MacGreevy, James Mathew Wilson 7. A director of his time: Thomas MacGreevy: Marie Burke 8. Thomas MacGreevy and the Geography of Criticism, Nicholas Allen Part III: Cities of MacGreevy 9. Thomas MacGreevy and His North Kerry Roots John Coolihan 10. Dublin, Andrew Goodspeed 11. London Revisited, 1925-27: In tinted glasses, Frank Hutton-Williams 12. Paris: The Emergence of an Urban Poetic Sandra O'Connell Part IV: MacGreevy & Friends 13. Beckett, MacGreevy and the Catholic Nation: 'too absolute and Ireland haunte'", Sean Kennedy 14. MacGreevy and Jack B Yeats, Karen Elizabeth Brown 15. Friendship with George and W.B. Yeats, Ann Saddlemyer 16. MacGreevy and Joyce,Terence Killeen 17. Thomas MacGreevy, American modernists, and the 'gift' of Irishness: So kind you are, to bring me this gift, Tara Stubbs 18. MacGreevy Remembered Coda: The Thomas MacGreevy Archive, Susan Schreibman Index