Frank McCourt

Frank McCourt was born August 19, 1930, in Brooklyn, to Malachy McCourt, an alcoholic laborer from County Antrim, and Angela Sheehan McCourt, from Limerick. The family returned to Ireland in the fall of 1934, when Frank was four, and settled into Limerick's slums after failing to find steady footing in Belfast and Dublin. His father drank away what little the family had, then left for war work in England around 1941 and stopped sending money entirely. Frank nearly died of typhoid at 11, stole food and coal to keep his mother and brothers fed, and left school for good at 13. He worked odd jobs until he had saved enough for passage, and in October 1949, at 19, he sailed for New York.

Drafted into the Army in 1951, McCourt spent two years in Bavaria training dogs and typing reports, then used the G.I. Bill for an English degree at NYU in 1957 and a master's at Brooklyn College a decade later. He taught in New York City public schools for close to three decades, six schools in all, ending at Stuyvesant High School, where he ran a popular creative-writing class. He did not publish a book until after he retired from teaching: Angela's Ashes, the memoir of that Limerick childhood, came out in 1996 when he was 65, sold in the millions, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography in 1997. Two more memoirs followed, 'Tis in 1999 and Teacher Man in 2005, but neither matched the first one's reach.

Not everyone recognized the childhood McCourt described. Limerick readers accused him of exaggerating both the family's poverty and the city's misery for effect; Paddy Malone, a childhood friend who appeared on the book's original cover, reportedly tore his copy apart in front of the author. By one widely reported account, McCourt's own mother once stood up during a live reading of the stories and told the room, 'It didn't happen that way!' The Redemptorist order, unhappy with how the book portrayed its Limerick church, refused to let the 1999 film crew shoot on its property, forcing the production to fake the city elsewhere. McCourt's own life ran through three marriages, the first, to Alberta Small, ending in divorce after 18 years.

McCourt died July 19, 2009, in Manhattan, of melanoma that had spread to the lining of his brain, with his third wife, Ellen Frey, at his side; they had married on August 13, 1994. New York opened the Frank McCourt High School of Writing, Journalism and Literature in his name the following year. Limerick, the city he had once been accused of libeling, ran a museum devoted to him from 2011 to 2019 and, after his death, scattered some of his ashes from Carrigogunnell Castle above the River Shannon, a reconciliation his book never quite managed while he lived.

Frank McCourt's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Angela's Ashes book
  Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, 1997 1996
• 'Tis book
  Memoir of his early years in New York 1999
• Teacher Man book
  Memoir of his nearly three decades teaching 2005
• Frank McCourt High School of Writing, Journalism and Literature building
  Opened in Manhattan the year after his death 2010

• August 19, 1930 aged 0 Born in Brooklyn, New York
• Fall 1934 aged ~4 Family returns to Ireland and settles in Limerick
• c. 1941 aged ~11 His father leaves for England and stops sending money
• October 1949 aged 19 Emigrates to New York at 19
• 1951 aged ~21 Drafted into the U.S. Army
• 1957 aged ~27 Graduates NYU with an English degree
• 1996 aged ~66 Publishes Angela's Ashes
• 1997 aged ~67 Wins the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography
• July 19, 2009 aged 78 Dies in Manhattan

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• Jonathan Kozol b. 1936
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• John Dewey 1859–1952
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