Hugh Maxton (born 1947), alias W. J. McCormack, is an Irish poet and academic.

Biography

William (Bill) John McCormack was born near Aughrim, County Wicklow in 1947. His parents were Irene (née King) and Charles Elliott McCormack. His father died from a heart-attack when he was aged 13 years.^[1] He attended Rathgar (Methodist) National School and won a scholarship to Wesley College, Dublin (1959-65). He proceeded to Trinity College Dublin from which he graduated with a BA (1971). He was awarded a D.Phil. by the New University of Ulster (1974). 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. ^[2]

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.^[3]

As a literary critic, he has written using his registered name of William J. McCracken. His specialism is 19th- and 20th-century Irish literature.^[4]

Works

Poetry

• Poems 2000-2005 (Dublin: Carysfort Press 2005).
• Same Bridge Perhaps, and Other Fugitive Poems with a postface by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (Dublin: Duras Press 2013).
• Gubu Roi: Poems and Satires (Belfast: Lagan Press 2000), 90pp.
• The Engraved Passion: New and Selected Poems 1970-1991 (Dublin: Dedalus 1992), 116pp.
• The Puzzle Tree Ascendant (Dublin: Dedalus 1988).
• At the Protestant Museum (Dublin: Dolmen 1986), 53pp.
• Passage (with surviving poems) (Bradford on Avon: q. pub. [1985]), 30pp.
• Swift Mail (1992).
• 6 Snapdragons (Clemson, S. Carolina: H. Maxton 1985), 12pp. [400 copies].
• Jubilee for Renegades, Poems 1976-1980 (Dublin: Dolmen 1982).
• The Noise of the Fields (Dublin: Dolmen 1976).
• Stones (Dublin: Allen Figgis 1970), 27pp.

Literary criticism

• Enigmas of Sacrifice: A Critique of Joseph M. Plunkett and the Dublin Insurrection of 1916 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2016).
• Northman: John Hewitt, 1907-1987, An Irish Writer, His World and His Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)
• Dublin Easter 1916: The French Connection (Dublin: Gill, 2012).
• Dissolute Characters: Irish Literary History Through Balzac, Sheridan Le Fanu, Yeats and Bowen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011).
• Blood Kindred: W. B. Yeats, the Life, the Death, the Politics (London: Pimlico, 2005).
• Roger Casement in Death: Or Haunting the Free State (Dublin: UCD Press, 2002).
• Fool Of The Family: A Life Of J.M. Synge (London: W&N, 2000).
• The Battle of the Books: Two Decades of Irish Cultural Debate (Dublin: Lilliput, 1989).
• J.Sheridan Le Fanu (Stroud: Sutton, 1997).
• The Pamphlet Debate on the Union Between Great Britain and Ireland, 1797-1800. (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1995).
• From Burke to Beckett: Ascendancy, Tradition and Betrayal in Literary History (Cork: Cork University Press, 1994).
• Sheridan LeFanu and Victorian Ireland (Dublin: Lilliput, 1990).

Awards

• Member of Aosdána
• Honorary member of the Széchenyi Academy of Letters and the Arts (Budapest)^[5]