Anthony Cronin

Đ Anthony Gerard Richard Cronin (23 December 1928 – 27 December 2016) was an Irish poet, novelist, biographer, critic, commentator, barrister and arts activist.

Biography
Anthony Cronin was born in Enniscorthy, County Wexford in December 1928. After obtaining a B.A. from the National University of Ireland, he entered the King's Inns and was later called to the Bar. With Flann O’Brien, Patrick Kavanagh and Con Leventhal, Cronin celebrated the first Bloomsday in 1954. He contributed to many television programmes, including Flann O’Brien: Man of Parts (BBC) and Folio (RTÉ). He had honorary doctorates from several institutions, including Dublin University, the National University of Ireland and the University of Poznan.

As an arts activist and adviser on arts and culture to the Taoiseach Charles Haughey (and briefly to Garret FitzGerald), Cronin was the originator of such initiatives as Aosdána, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Heritage Council. He was the inspiration for, and a founding member of, Aosdána, and was elected its first Saoi (a distinction conferred for exceptional artistic achievement) in 2003. Cronin was a member of its governing body, the Toscaireacht, until his death. He was also a member of the governing bodies of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Ireland, of which he was for a time Acting Chairman.

Cronin began his literary career as a contributor to Envoy, A Review of Literature and Art. He was editor of The Bell in the 1950s and literary editor of Time and Tide (London). He wrote a weekly column, "Viewpoint", in the Irish Times from 1974 to 1980. Later he contributed a column on poetry to the Sunday Independent.

His first collection of poems, called simply Poems (Cresset, London), was published in 1958. Several collections followed and his Collected Poems (New Island, Dublin) was published in 2004. The End of the Modern World (New Island, 2016), written over several decades, was his final publication.

Cronin's first novel, The Life of Riley, is a satire on bohemian life in Ireland in the mid-20th century, while his memoir Dead as Doornails addresses the same subject. He also wrote landmark biographies of two Irish writers, No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien (1989) and Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist (1996).

From 1966 to 1968 Cronin was a visiting lecturer at the University of Montana and from 1968 to 1970 he was poet in residence at Drake University.

Personal life
Cronin was married to Thérèse Campbell, from whom he separated in the mid-1980s. She died in 1999. They had two daughters, Iseult and Sarah; Iseult was killed in a road accident in Spain.

Cronin died on 27 December 2016 at the age of 88. He was survived by his second wife, author Anne Haverty and by his daughter Sarah.