"John Fury" (Harper and Brothers, 1946) is the story of an Irish working-class man who moves from a happy marriage to an unpleasant one in a life of poverty, hard work, and frustration, where his only reprisal is anger. According to the website of Ayer Company Publishers, a reprint publisher of rare and hard to find titles, Mary McGrory praised the book in "The New York Times" at the time of publication:It adds up to a remarkable first novel, warm and strong, its unflinching realism saved from brutality by the author's compassion and restraint ... What Betty Smith did tenderly for Brooklyn, James T. Farrell harshly for Chicago and, most recently, Edward McSorley in his moving "Our Own Kind" for Providence, Dunphy does for Philadelphia. Calmann-Lévy published a French translation in 1949, which is available at the Library of Congress. Arno Press reprinted the English version in 1976.