Monk Gibbon

William Monk Gibbon (1896 – 29 November 1987) was an Irish poet and prolific author, known as "The Grand Old Man of Irish Letters". His collection of over twenty volumes of poetry, autobiography, travel and criticism are kept at Queen's University Belfast. The Monk Gibbon fonds are kept at the University Archives, Queen's University Kingston. The material consists of correspondence, drafts of his books, poems, photographs and news clippings. Correspondents include W.B. Yeats, other members of the Yeats family, George William Russell (A.E.), George Moore, John Eglinton and Padraic Colum. He also wrote many published novels, and has been characterised as "self-regarding and prickly".

Monk Gibbon was the son of the Rev. Canon William Monk Gibbon (1864–1935), a Church of Ireland clergyman, and from 1900 vicar of St. Nahi's Church, Dundrum.[1]. His mother, Isabella Agnes Meredith, was a daughter of William Rice Meredith of Dublin, the brother of John Walsingham Cooke Meredith. Monk was a nephew of The Rt. Hon. Richard Edmund Meredith and a first cousin of Carew Arthur Meredith. Monk's uncle, John, inherited the Gibbon estates of Sleedagh House, County Wexford, and The Parks in Neston, Cheshire, which came to them via the Monk family for whom he was named.

He was educated at St. Columba's College, Dublin and Keble College, Oxford, but after only one term he volunteered for the army, serving as an officer in France during the First World War until invalided out in 1915. He became an avid pacifist after his experiences of war, and left Ireland to teach English in Switzerland. He also taught in England before returning to Ireland, not retiring until he was in his 80's.

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