Donn Byrne

Donn Byrne (1889–1928) was the pen name of Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne, born in New York to Irish parents and raised in Ireland, where he studied at University College Dublin before returning to America as a journalist and writer of magazine stories. Messer Marco Polo in 1921, a retelling of the traveler's life in the voice of an Irish storyteller, made his reputation, and The Wind Bloweth, Blind Raftery and Hangman's House followed, along with the collection Changeling and Other Stories. He had settled in County Cork when he was killed at thirty-eight in a motor accident, his car going off the road into the sea.