Art for Flann’s Sake? A Possible Pseudonym for Michael Victor O’Nolan

Abstract

For several years just before the First World War, a columnist called ‘Art Flann’ was a regular contributor to northern Irish provincial newspapers including the Strabane Chronicle and Ulster Herald. Erudite, argumentative, often satirical, he was also invariably – as a later Flann O’Brien (or Myles na gCopaleen) would have said – sound on the national question. He wrote on a wide range of subjects, including education, the courts, the Orange Order, and the coming of Home Rule, but a common thread was the misgovernment of Ireland as part of the UK. The pseudonym’s career lasted from about 1908 to 1914, ending just as the future Flann O’Brien (then an infant) and a fast-expanding O’Nolan family moved from Strabane to Dublin. This note considers the possibility that Michael Victor O’Nolan, then crown servant and home-schooling patriarch of the O’Nolan clan, was the man behind the nom de plume.