Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes, has passed away at the age of 78. In a New York hospice on Sunday, July 19, McCourt died of meningitis. He is survived by his third wife Ellen Frey, daughter Margaret McCourt, and brothers Malachy, Michael, and Alphie McCourt.The schoolteacher-turned-memoirist was born in New York, but had spent most of his childhood in his parents’ native Limerick, Ireland. It is there that Angela’s Ashes, the story of his childhood, takes place.
McCourt had become a devoted reader at the age of ten, when he was hospitalized for three months with typhoid. In the comfort of the well-heated hospital with its well-stocked library—a far cry from the impoverished conditions he was used to at home—the young McCourt read his first lines of Shakespeare, and was hooked.
As an adult, McCourt turned his passion for reading into a profession, and spent thirty years as a teacher of English. Though he dabbled in writing, he didn’t have much success until later in life, when Angela’s Ashes was published when he was 66. All he had wanted was to have a library of Congress catalogue number, but the book became a runaway bestseller and then won the Pulitzer, bringing McCourt fame he had never dreamed of. He went on to publish two more volumes of memoir, but neither received the acclaim of Angela’s Ashes. [Via Time]
--Rachel Frier
Photo: Time
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