John Banim - Early Life

Early Life

John Banim was born in Kilkenny. At the age of four, he was sent to a local school where he was taught the basics of reading and grammar. He was removed from this school at age five and sent to the English Academy at Kilkenny where his older brother Michael (1796–1874) was a student. An account of this school is given in the novel Father Connell. After five years at the English Academy, John was sent to a seminary run by the Rev. Magrath, considered to be the finest Roman Catholic school in Ireland, where he remained for a year before being sent to another academy run by a well-known teacher named Terence Doyle. Throughout his school years he read avidly and wrote his own stories and poems. As a boy he came up with a birthday tradition where he would gather all of his writings of the previous year, re-read them critically, and then burn the ones he found lacking.

When he was ten, John visited the home of the poet Thomas Moore, bringing along some of his own poetry in manuscript. Moore encouraged John in his writing and gave him a season ticket to his private theatre in Kilkenny, where Moore himself was performing at the time. In his thirteenth year he entered Kilkenny College and devoted himself specially to drawing and miniature painting. He pursued his artistic education for two years in the schools of the Royal Dublin Society, and afterwards taught drawing in Kilkenny, where he fell in love with one of his pupils, a girl of seventeen named Anne. His affection was returned, but the parents of the young lady interfered and removed her from Kilkenny. She pined away and died less than two months later of consumption. Her death made a deep impression on Banim, whose health suffered severely and permanently.