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14 Facts About Ethna MacCarthy

1.

Ethna MacCarthy was an Irish poet and paediatrician.

2.

Ethna MacCarthy's father was Brendan MacCarthy, a doctor and a medical inspector in the Local Government Board, and Eleanor McCarthy.

3.

Ethna MacCarthy had two brothers Denis Florence and Desmond, and a sister.

4.

Ethna MacCarthy enrolled in a secretarial college, going on to the Royal Academy of Music, and then entering Trinity College Dublin in 1922 as a foundation scholar.

5.

Ethna MacCarthy became a lecturer in French and Provencal in TCD.

6.

Ethna MacCarthy had many admirers due to her outgoing nature, including Denis Johnston and Samuel Beckett.

7.

Ethna MacCarthy appears in Beckett's Dream of fair to middling women as "the Alba", and is said to have been the inspiration for the girl in the punt in Krapp's last tape.

8.

Ethna MacCarthy began a long-term relationship with Con Leventhal, with the couple marrying in 1956 after the death of his wife.

9.

Ethna MacCarthy left this post in 1954, and was intending on joining the World Health Organization, but failed the obligatory physical examination.

10.

Ethna MacCarthy made a few contributions to the Irish Journal of Medical Science on topics relating to public health problems.

11.

Much like her grandfather and aunt, Ethna MacCarthy was a poet in her own right.

12.

Ethna MacCarthy was deemed to be "a good minor poet", and was included in a number of anthologies, including the 1948 New Irish poets by Devin-Adair Publishing Company.

13.

Ethna MacCarthy died on 24 May 1959 at the East Ham Memorial Hospital, London, having suffered from throat cancer for a year.

14.

Material by Ethna MacCarthy is held within the TCD Con Leventhal collection.