For more than a quarter of a century, Sean O’Casey enjoyed living in what he called the ‘delightful county’ of Devon. O’Casey remained newsworthy in Ireland until his death, but he lived in relative anonymity in this English seaside area, and today the county does little to remember the writer. This chapter examines the way that O’Casey interacted with the local area of Devon, and the chapter also illustrates how his writing was shaped by the personal events that happened in this geographical location, such as the death of his son Niall from cancer in 1956, his interaction with Devon neighbours, and the contact he enjoyed with visitors who travelled to meet him, such as the Irish playwright Denis Johnston.

Sean O’Casey based himself in London between 1926 and 1938, and this chapter examines the cultural life of interwar London during O’Casey’s time there. London’s theatre world had long been an important destination for Irish playwrights, and this section of the book establishes the kind of expectations and tastes that O’Casey encountered when he arrived here from Dublin. The chapter explores O’Casey’s interaction with the English capital’s culture and society, and shows how the move to the English capital shaped O’Casey’s social views as well as the subject and form of his writing.

Eileen Carey’s books are rarely read; her acting career was forgotten during her lifetime; and her presence in literary culture has always remained in the shadow of her husband. But she provided important support for Sean O’Casey throughout the second half of his life, and there is also great prescience in her own writing. This chapter presents a new assessment of Eileen Carey’s professional career in the wake of the #MeToo (2006–) and #WakingTheFeminists (2015–16) movements, showing how she experienced and wrote about male abuse in the entertainment industry, and how she inspired her husband to write about some of those themes in his own writing.

This chapter examines gender and sexuality in the writings of Sean O’Casey, through analysis of three works that demonstrate his preoccupation with the way women’s sexuality intersects with money, class, and sex work. As well as examining The Plough and the Stars (1926) and its reception, the chapter analyses two of his lesser-studied works – the short story ‘The Job’, and the prose poem ‘Gold and Silver Will Not Do’ from Windfalls (1934) – and the chapter highlights certain connections between the short-story writing and Eileen O’Casey’s personal experiences.