Charles Fanning

Charles Fanning received B.A. and M.A.T. degrees from Harvard and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. He taught courses in modern poetry and the history and literature of Ireland and Irish immigration at Bridgewater State University, the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, the University of Missouri St. Louis, and Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Much of his writing has involved discovering and reclaiming the Irish-American literary tradition in books, essays, and editions. Three of his books received national awards. Finley Peter Dunne and Mr. Dooley: The Chicago Years won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award of the Organization of American Historians. The Exiles of Erin: Nineteenth-Century Irish-American Fiction won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. The Irish Voice in America: 250 Years of Irish-American Fiction won the Book Prize in Literary Criticism of the American Conference for Irish Studies. His edited works include the “Mr. Dooley” columns of Finley Peter Dunne, eight novels and selected stories by James T. Farrell, and the selected writings of Irish Studies scholar John V. Kelleher. He also wrote Mapping Norwood: An Irish American Memoir. His first novel, The Music of What Happens: A Novel of Chicago in the 1880s, will appear in spring of 2024. He and his wife Frances Purcell Fanning have two children, Stephen and Ellen, and two grandchildren, Lillian and Alice Dorsey. Ellen is married to Ryan Dorsey. Everyone currently lives in Saint Louis, Missouri.