July 20 (Bloomberg) -- Frank McCourt, whose searing 1996 memoir of his impoverished childhood in the U.S. and Ireland won the Pulitzer Prize and turned the modest New York City school teacher into a literary celebrity, died yesterday. He was 78.

The cause was melanoma, according to the New York Times. In May, his publicist said McCourt was being treated for the deadliest form of skin cancer.

“Angela’s Ashes” rose to No. 1 on the New York Times non- fiction best-seller list and was named best nonfiction book of 1996 by Time and Newsweek. Published in 25 languages and in 30 countries, it has sold more than 5 million copies, according to publisher Simon & Schuster. The 1997 Pulitzer for biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award were among its many honors. It was turned into a 1999 film.

In the book, McCourt recalled his immigrant family’s return to Ireland from Brooklyn when he was four and the relentless hardships they endured in the city of Limerick. Dire poverty left the family begging for food and sometimes stealing it. His father’s penchant for drink drove his mother, Angela, into the depths of depression, as did the deaths of three of her children from illness, leaving Frank and three brothers as survivors.

“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all,” he wrote. “It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.”

McCourt endured in part through his love of books and writing and his durable sense of humor.

Surviving on Humor

“I think if you talk to anybody who has come out of adverse circumstances they’ll tell you that humor keeps you going,” he said in a 2006 interview with the Academy of Achievement, a Washington-based nonprofit group. “I remember laughing in a way in Ireland that I’ve never laughed since.”

Only after teaching for 27 years at New York City public schools did McCourt become a published author. “Angela’s Ashes” was the first of three autobiographies he began writing in his mid-60s.

The book concluded with McCourt at 19, having emerged as the family’s chief breadwinner, preparing to move back to the U.S. The sequel, “’Tis,’’ picked up with him sailing to New York City. The last of the trilogy, “Teacher Man,” described his classroom experiences starting in 1958.

Francis McCourt was born on Aug. 19, 1930, in Brooklyn, to Angela and Malachy McCourt. The Great Depression forced the family to return to Ireland in 1934.

Delivering Telegrams

McCourt attended Leamy’s National School in Limerick until he was 13. Instead of going on to secondary school, he got a job at the post office delivering telegrams.

His father left for England in 1941, abandoning his wife and their four boys -- Frank and brothers Malachy, Michael and Alphie. As the eldest child, McCourt took on greater responsibilities. He alternated between odd jobs at the local cement factory and flour mill while dabbling in petty crime to provide the family with food.

In 1949, he returned to New York and worked manual-labor jobs at warehouses and docks until the U.S. Army drafted him at the start of the Korean War. He considered that a charmed turning point to his life.

Beneficiary of History

“I don’t know what I would have done if the Chinese hadn’t attacked Korea,” he said in his interview with the Academy of Achievement. “I’m a victim of history in Ireland and a beneficiary of history in America.”

After the war he pursued a college education on the G.I. Bill and persuaded New York University to admit him even though he had no high-school diploma. His childhood interest in language and storytelling, coupled with several creative-writing classes, led him to a career in teaching.

He taught at Staten Island’s McKee Vocational High School, then Seward Park High School on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He ultimately landed at elite Stuyvesant High School, where he stayed for 18 years.

McCourt’s teaching style was unconventional. He largely ignored the lesson plan and told stories. “Teaching is more than walking in there and standing up and saying, ‘All right now, boys and girls, today we’re going to talk about Chaucer’s use of the semicolon,’” he joked in a 2006 speech to the New York State Writers Institute.

He encouraged his students to start writing by scribbling whatever came to mind, the way an artist starts a sketch. It took McCourt a while to heed his own advice.

He said he tried, and failed, as early as 1967 to put down on paper the memoir that had long been circulating in his head. Neither his mother’s death, in 1981, nor his father’s, in 1985, prompted him to start writing.

After retiring from teaching, he co-wrote the play “A Couple of Blaguards” with his brother Malachy, and finally got to work on the memoir that would make him an acclaimed writer.

McCourt had a daughter, Maggie, with his first wife, Alberta. That marriage ended in divorce. He married Ellen Frey in 1994.

To contact the reporter on this story: Anne Ferrer in New York City at aferrer1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 19, 2009 22:22 EDT