Flann O'Brien

O'Nolan spent his career as an Irish civil servant by day while writing, under the pen name Myles na gCopaleen, a wildly popular satirical column, Cruiskeen Lawn, for the Irish Times for over twenty years: a double life he kept from most of his employers. He published At Swim-Two-Birds under the name Flann O'Brien in 1939; James Joyce, dying in Paris, called it the work of a true comic writer, but the novel sold poorly and most of the unsold stock was destroyed in a London warehouse bombing during the Blitz.

His second novel, The Third Policeman, was rejected by publishers and shelved for the rest of his life, appearing only after his death in 1966. Heavy drinking and civil-service obscurity kept him from wide recognition in his lifetime; his reputation as one of Irish fiction's great comic formal innovators grew steadily after.