O'Kelly, Seumas (1875?–1918), journalist and writer, was born James Kelly in Mobhill, Loughrea, Co. Galway, youngest of seven (or possibly eight) children of Michael Kelly, corn merchant, and his wife, Catherine Fitzgerald. His date of birth is uncertain; some commentators believe he was the James Kelly whose birth was registered on 16 November 1875, but relatives claimed this was a sibling and namesake who died prematurely. His death certificate implies he was born in 1878, and family members maintained he was born in 1880.
Loughrea was at the centre of the bitterly-fought plan of campaign agitation on the Clanricarde estate from the late 1880s; many tenants in the town and surrounding rural districts were evicted for non-payment of rent, and Lord Clanricarde (qv) (d.1916), resisted reinstatement until the estate was purchased by special legislation shortly before the first world war. According to one source, the O'Kellys were themselves evicted during the Plan of Campaign, though they seem to have retained a degree of financial stability. A widespread perception that nationalist politicians had exploited the evicted tenants contributed to the relative strength of Parnellism in the area, and the early appearance of Sinn Féin; this background inspired such works as O'Kelly's 1917 play, The Parnellite.
While growing up in Loughrea, O'Kelly was profoundly influenced by contact with older relatives and country folk from whom he learned some Irish and the folklore/storytelling tradition that shapes many of his stories. The example of his mother, and friendship with the local Carmelite fathers, whom he served as an altar boy, gave him a strong commitment to catholicism. This coexists in his work with an Ibsenite-Parnellite insistence on individual defiance of conformity, and a gentle exaltation of the sensitive dreamer isolated from the life around him. The mixture is sometimes uneasy. His observations on domestic violence, the sexual exploitation of servant girls by hypocritically pious employers, and prejudice against children born outside marriage or raised in the workhouse, are unobtrusive but biting. His play, The bribe (1913), gives a devastating depiction of the social and economic pressures which induce a small-town shopkeeper and poor law guardian to accept a bribe to appoint an underqualified dispensary doctor, with disastrous results; the corrupt and snobbish doctor is called Power O'Connor – an unsubtle hit at the nationalist MP, T. P. O'Connor (qv). This element of social observation distinguishes him from the more symbolist city-born Daniel Corkery (qv), to whom he is often compared. Much of his writing is recognisably set in Loughrea (‘Ballyrea’).
O'Kelly began working as a journalist on local papers, variously said to have included the Midland Tribune, the Tuam News, and the Connacht Leader. He became editor of the Southern Star, based in Skibbereen, Co. Cork, in 1903, and is said to have been the youngest newspaper editor in Ireland. He moved to Naas, Co. Kildare, in 1906, as editor of the Leinster Leader. Here he lived in a house by the canal, which provided the inspiration for his linked series of short stories, The golden barque, along with his father, a nephew, and his brother Michael. Already a contributor to the United Irishman published by Arthur Griffith (qv), and later its successor, Sinn Féin, O'Kelly was active in the Naas Sinn Féin club and made regular weekend visits to Dublin, where Griffith introduced him to Dublin literary circles. Here his closest friends were James Stephens (qv), whose influence is visible in the more whimsical and fantastic elements of O'Kelly's work, and Seumas O'Sullivan (qv) (James Starkey), who recalled O'Kelly as a man of remarkable gentleness and integrity.
O'Kelly's journalistic career was accompanied by his development as a writer, publishing stories in a variety of outlets, including the Irish Rosary and the Irish Packet. From 1908 he had several plays produced by the Theatre of Ireland, a nationalist-oriented rival to the Abbey. Lustre (1913), written jointly with Casimir Markievicz, later became the basis for a Soviet film.
Around 1911, O'Kelly suffered a severe attack of rheumatic fever, which left him with a chronic heart condition and a strong sense of mortality; he continued to write extensively and with increasing skill. He became editor of the Dublin Saturday Evening Post in 1912 and moved to Dublin, where he lived in Drumcondra. At this time he was an occasional contributor to the Manchester Guardian, turning down a permanent job on that paper. He left the Post in 1915 because of continuing ill-health and was offered the editorship of the Sunday Freeman but had to retire after two weeks and he returned to Naas. At this time his play, Driftwood, commissioned by Annie Horniman (qv), was produced in Manchester and London.
When O'Kelly's brother was interned after the Easter rising, he resumed the editorship of the Leinster Leader until his brother's release at Christmas 1916; he also contributed topical articles to the Sunday Independent. His literary reputation continued to increase with a short story collection, Waysiders (1917), and his best-regarded full-length novel, The lady of Deerpark (1917), a melancholy story about the last heiress of a declining catholic gentry family. Another novel, Wet clay (1922), was published posthumously and is the story of the tense relationship between a ‘returned Yank’ and his small-farmer cousins, which shows deeply unresolved ambivalence about the nature and prospects of Irish rural society after the land war.
When Griffith and many other Sinn Féin activists were arrested and imprisoned in May 1918, O'Kelly returned to Dublin to edit the Sinn Féin paper Nationality. During the days after the armistice of 11 November 1918, a crowd of soldiers and women whose husbands were serving in the British army attacked the paper's premises, which were also the headquarters of Sinn Féin. As a result of these attacks O'Kelly suffered a cerebral haemorrhage which led to his death on 14 November 1918. His funeral turned into a major political demonstration and his status as a nationalist martyr led to the posthumous publication of many of his works. These include the novella, The weaver's grave (1920), generally regarded as his masterpiece; it has been reprinted regularly and translated into several languages. A 1961 Radio Éireann adaptation by Micheal Ó hAodha won the Prix d'Italia. The twenty-fifth and fiftieth anniversaries of his death saw various commemorations in his honour and a short-lived Seumas O'Kelly Society was founded in 1968. O'Kelly was unmarried but he is said to have cherished a hopeless passion for the actress and nationalist activist, Máire Níc Shiubhlaigh (qv) (Mary Walker), for whom he wrote the play, The shuiler's child (1909).