Thomas Bonner Flanagan (November 5, 1923 – March 21, 2002) was an American university professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a novelist.

Biography

Flanagan was born in 1923 in Greenwich, Connecticut, to a homemaker mother and a dentist father. All of his grandparents had come to the United States from County Fermanagh, Ireland. He served in the United States Army during World War II. He graduated from Amherst College in 1945. He received his Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Columbia University. From 1960 to 1978 he was Professor of English Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, specializing in Irish literature. He was a tenured Full Professor in the English Department at the Stony Brook University until his retirement. Flanagan was also a successful novelist. His first novel, The Year of the French, won the National Book Critics Award for fiction in 1979 and was adapted into a TV series, which was broadcast in Ireland in 1982.

Personal life

In 1949, he married Jane Parker, a nurse; they had two children, writer Caitlin Flanagan and Ellen Flanagan Klavan. His son-in-law is writer Andrew Klavan. He and his wife spent much of their time in Ireland. They lived in East Setauket, Long Island. He died on March 21, 2002, at the age of 78 in Berkeley.

Works

Historical novels

Non-fiction work

Legacy

The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds his papers.

Sources