Angela’s Ashes (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Frank McCourt
- First Published: 1996
- Type of Work: Memoir
- Time of Work: 1930-1949
- Setting: Mostly Limerick, Ireland
- Principal Characters: Frank McCourt, Malachy McCourt, Angela Sheehan McCourt, Malachy Gerard McCourt, Oliver, Margaret McCourt, Michael “Mike”, Paddy Clohessy, Fintan Slattery, Mikey Molloy, Mrs. Leibowitz, Minnie MacAdorey, Angela Dimino, Mr. O’Neill, Theresa Carmody, Mr. Timoney, Mr. Hannon
- Genres: Nonfiction, Autobiography, Memoir
- Subjects: Maturation or coming of age, Family or family life, Poverty or poor people, Alcoholism or alcoholics, Substance abuse, Immigration or emigration, Catholics or Catholic Church, Ireland or Irish people, Typhoid fever
- Locales: Limerick, Ireland
Poverty, the mournful familiar of Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir, has always occupied the thoughts of great writers. During the first century a.d., Juvenal wrote that “bitter poverty has no harder pang than that it makes men ridiculous.” In his preface to Major Barbara (pr. 1905), George Bernard Shaw declared that “the greatest of our evils and the worst of our crimes is poverty.” More recently, American poet William Carlos Williams, who was a practicing physician, expressed delight at the “anarchy” he found among his poor clients in Rutherford,...
[The entire page is 2066 words long]
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