'I thought that no man liveth and dieth to himself, so I put behind what I thought and what I did the panorama of the world I lived in - the things that made me.' Sean O'Casey, 1948 Sean O'Casey's six-part Autobiographies, originally published between 1939 and 1955, is an eloquently comprehensive self-portrait of an artist's life and times, unsurpassed in literature. As its title suggests, Rose and Crown (1952) reflects O'Casey's experience of making a new home in England where, socialist passion intact, he makes a sharp study of the General Strike of 1926. Sunset and Evening Star (1954) offers both valediction and celebration: for though O'Casey views Ireland as 'a decaying ark . afraid of the falling rain of the world's thought', he can still envisage the nation's young 'throwing out some of the musty stuff, bringing the fresh and the new .'