John M. Feehan

He entered secondary schooling at Rockwell College and later attended University College Galway.

Feehan joined the Irish Army and reached the rank of captain before resigning in 1945. He had four children. He founded the successful Cork-based publishing house Mercier Press in 1944 and served as its managing director. In 1946, he published This Tremendous Lover by Dom Eugene Boylan which sold over a million copies. At the Frankfurt Book Fair he secured the translation rights of German books on philosophy and religion that sold well. In the 1960s he launched a successful range of paperbacks on Irish literature, culture, religion and history.