Una Troy Walsh

Who is Una Troy Walsh?

Una Troy Walsh was an Irish novelist and playwright who wrote under the names Elizabeth Connor and Una Troy.

Troy was born in Fermoy, County Cork, Ireland in 1913. She married Dr. Joe Walsh of Bonmahon who served as physician to the I.R.A. West Waterford Flying Column under Commandant George Lennon of Dungarvan. He is buried adjacent to the Republican Plot in Kilrossanty, Co. Waterford. Her sister in law, Mai, was the wife of renowned Irish artist Sean Keating RHA of Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin.

Writing under the pen name of "Elizabeth Connor", she began her career in 1936 with the publication of the novel Mount Prospect which was banned in the Irish Free State. Adapted as a play, it garnered the Shaw Prize for new playwrights and was performed on the Abbey stage in 1940. Three subsequent plays were also performed at the Abbey in the 1940s. In 1938, Dead Star's Light was published. The protagonist, John Davern, was based on the character of IRA revolutionary idealist George Lennon of West Waterford. While not banned, it did elicit censure from her Sts. Peter and Paul Clonmel parish priest, who denied membership in his congregation to the author, husband and daughter. Dead Star's Light, performed on the Abbey stage in 1947 as The Dark Road, noted the Davern/Lennon character as a "gun man, agitator, anti-cleric and a communist".