St John Greer Ervine (28 December 1883 – 24 January 1971) was an Irish biographer, novelist, critic, dramatist, and theatre manager. He was the most prominent Ulster writer of the early twentieth century and a major Irish dramatist whose work influenced the plays of W. B. Yeats and Sean O'Casey. The Wayward Man was among the first novels to explore the character, and conflicts, of Belfast. Biography Ervine was born as John Greer Irvine in Ballymacarrett in east Belfast, in the shadow of the shipyards, to deaf-mute parents. Every member of his family had been born in County Down for 300 years. His father, a printer, died soon after his birth and the family moved in with Ervine's grandmother who ran a small shop. Ervine became an insurance clerk in a Belfast office at the age of 17 and shortly after he moved to London. In London Ervine met George Bernard Shaw and began to write journalism as well as his first plays, adopting the name St John Ervine "as more fitting for his ambitions". His first full-length play, Mixed Marriage, was produced by Dublin's Abbey Theatre in 1911. It had several runs as one of the Abbey's most profitable plays. Yeats praised Ervine's plays for depicting the real life experienced by the people of the north of Ireland as Synge's work had done for those of the west of Ireland. In June 1913, Ervine was standing beside Emily Davison at The Derby and witnessed her being fatally injured by King George V's horse. In 1915 Yeats appointed Ervine as the Abbey's general manager. Ervine's tenure was a commercial success. The production of several successful comedies restored the theatre's finances. But Ervine's demands on the actors, combined with his outrage at the Easter Rising of 1916, led to open conflict. Ervine resigned from the Abbey in 1916 and enlisted in the Household Battalion. On 1 January 1917 he was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant in the second reserve of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, and was transferred to a regular battalion on 1 August 1917. After being wounded in Flanders one of his legs had to be amputated. He was promoted to lieutenant on 1 February 1919 and relinquished his commission due to his wounds on 5 December 1919. Through the 1920s and 1930s Ervine wrote drawing-room comedies that were box-office successes. Several had West End runs of up to