Mary Manning Adams, an Irish novelist, actress, playwright and critic who was born in Ireland but lived part of her life in the Boston area, died June 25 of kidney failure in Cambridge, MA., according to The Boston Globe reported.
Ms. Adams, who was 93, helped found the Poet's Theater of Cambridge, which offered a voice to new writers in the 1950s. Before living in the U.S., the Dublin native studied theatre in London and wrote film reviews for the Irish Statesman. She acted at and wrote plays for the Abbey and Gate theatres in Dublin in the 1920s and '30s, the Globe reported.
She reportedly collaborated on several scripts and projects with a childhood pal, the celebrated playwright Samuel Beckett.
She moved to Boston in 1935 and married Harvard lawyer Mark DeWolf Howe and was head of drama at Radcliffe College in the 1940s. Jack Lemmon was one of her students, according to the Globe.
In 1967, Ms. Adams returned to Dublin and was theatre critic for The Irish Times. In 1980 she moved to Cambridge, MA, and married Faneuil Adams. She wrote the novels "The Last Chronicles of Ballyfungus" (under the name Mary Manning) and "Mount Venus," and a 1996 play about Rose Kennedy titled "Go Lovely Rose." She is survived by three daughters, seven grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
-- By Kenneth Jones
