Hugh Maxton


Hugh Maxton, alias W. J. McCormack, is an Irish poet and academic.

Biography

William John McCormack was born near Aughrim, County Wicklow in 1947. His parents were Irene and Charles Elliott McCormack. His father died from a heart attack when William was 13 years old. He attended Rathgar National School and won a scholarship to Wesley College, Dublin. He proceeded to Trinity College Dublin from which he graduated with a BA. He was awarded a D.Phil. by the New University of Ulster. He lectured both at the Coleraine and Magee College campuses of that university before proceeding to the University of Leeds. He was awarded a personal chair in Literary History at Goldsmiths, University of London in 1995.

Writing

As a poet, he adopted the name Hugh Maxton, supposedly from the Scottish socialist James Maxton. He has written a large number of books of poetry as well as translations from Hungarian and German.
As a literary critic, he has written using his registered name William J. McCracken. His specialism is 19th- and 20th-century Irish literature.

Works

Poetry

  • Poems 2000-2005.
  • Same Bridge Perhaps, and Other Fugitive Poems with a postface by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin.
  • Gubu Roi: Poems and Satires, 90pp.
  • The Engraved Passion: New and Selected Poems 1970-1991, 116pp.
  • The Puzzle Tree Ascendant.
  • At the Protestant Museum, 53pp.
  • Passage , 30pp.
  • Swift Mail.
  • 6 Snapdragons, 12pp. .
  • Jubilee for Renegades, Poems 1976-1980.
  • The Noise of the Fields..
  • Stones, 27pp.

    Literary criticism

  • Enigmas of Sacrifice: A Critique of Joseph M. Plunkett and the Dublin Insurrection of 1916.
  • Northman: John Hewitt, 1907-1987, An Irish Writer, His World and His Times
  • Dublin Easter 1916: The French Connection.
  • Dissolute Characters: Irish Literary History Through Balzac, Sheridan Le Fanu, Yeats and Bowen.
  • Blood Kindred: W. B. Yeats, the Life, the Death, the Politics.
  • Roger Casement in Death: Or Haunting the Free State.
  • Fool Of The Family: A Life Of J.M. Synge.
  • The Battle of the Books: Two Decades of Irish Cultural Debate.
  • J.Sheridan Le Fanu.
  • The Pamphlet Debate on the Union Between Great Britain and Ireland, 1797-1800..
  • From Burke to Beckett: Ascendancy, Tradition and Betrayal in Literary History.
  • Sheridan LeFanu and Victorian Ireland.

    Awards

  • Member of Aosdána
  • Honorary member of the Széchenyi Academy of Letters and the Arts