Michael Banim

Irish author

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June 18, 2026

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John and Michael Banim were brothers who collaborated on novels and stories depicting Irish peasant life. They often published jointly under the pseudonym "the O'Hara Brothers." Their works, such as Tales, by the O’Hara Family (1825), were successful and known for their melodramatic invention. John Banim was sometimes called "the Scott of Ireland." Michael Banim was an active supporter of Roman Catholic emancipation and his novel The Croppy (1828) is a vivid depiction of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Their writing often infused contemporary stories of the Catholic Irish peasantry with elements of superstition and sentimentality.12

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John and Michael Banim
…Family, written in collaboration with Michael, who had studied for the bar but had had to take over his father’s business. All three Tales—two by John, The Fetches and John Doe, and one by Michael, Crohoore of the Bill Hook—are remarkable for their melodramatic invention and were immediately successful, John…
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…Family, written in collaboration with Michael, who had studied for the bar but had had to take over his father’s business. All three Tales—two by John, The Fetches and John Doe, and one by Michael, Crohoore of the Bill Hook—are remarkable for their melodramatic invention and were immediately successful, John…
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Irish literature
Roman Catholic writers
Brothers John and Michael Banim, who sometimes published jointly under the pseudonym “the O’Hara Brothers,” produced a series of novels and tales often historical and always politically pessimistic, as are John’s The Boyne Water (1826), set in Ulster during the Jacobite war of 1688–91, and Michael’s vivid The…
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Brothers John and Michael Banim, who sometimes published jointly under the pseudonym “the O’Hara Brothers,” produced a series of novels and tales often historical and always politically pessimistic, as are John’s The Boyne Water (1826), set in Ulster during the Jacobite war of 1688–91, and Michael’s vivid The…
Read More