Mary Colum

Who was Mary Colum?

Mary Colum was an Irish literary critic and author.

Mary Gunning Maguire was born in Collooney, County Sligo, daughter of Charles Maguire, Constable and Catherine Gunning who died in 1895 to be reared by her grandmother Catherine in Ballisodare, Co. Sligo. She attended boarding school in St. Louis' Convent, Monaghan, which she described as a 'self-contained totalitarian state' with standards of 'unselfishness, magnanimity, and devotion to others I rarely found in the world afterwards.'

She continued her studies at Royal University Trinity and was founder of the Twilight Literary Society which led her to meet W. B. Yeats. She regularly attended the Abbey Theatre and was a frequent visitor amongst the salons, readings and debates there.

After graduation in 1909 she taught at St Ita's - a companion school to Patrick Pearse's St. Enda's School. She was active with Thomas MacDonagh and others in national and cultural causes. She co-founded The Irish Review with David Houston, Thomas MacDonagh et al. and was encouraged by Yeats to specialise in French literary criticism and to translate Paul Claudel.