Edna OBrien

Edna O'Brien 1932-, Irish writer, b. Twamgraney. After living in Dublin, she moved (1954) to London, where she still lives. Her constant theme and the setting of her fiction, however, is Ireland. In richly sensual prose, O'Brien explores the dreams, failed marriages, doomed affairs, brief happiness, and ultimate disenchantment of individual women in her homeland's enclosed, sexually repressed culture. Several of her works were once banned there. Her early works include a trilogy, The Country Girls (1960), The Lonely Girl (1962), and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964). Among her subsequent novels are Casualties of Peace (1966), Johnny I Hardly Knew You (1977), and The High Road (1988). Her later novels, such as House of Splendid Isolation (1994), Down by the River (1997), and In the Forest (2002), continue to focus on the vicissitudes of women's lives while treating larger themes of the Irish experience. The semiautobiographical The Light of Evening (2006), her 20th novel, features a version of her mother as a central character. O'Brien is equally known for her beautifully wrought short stories, which have appeared in such collections as The Love Object (1968), A Scandalous Woman (1974), A Fanatic Heart (1984), and Lantern Slides (1990). She has also written a biography of James Joyce (1999), essays, plays, and screenplays.

Bibliography: See her memoir, Mother Ireland (1976); studies by G. Eckley (1974) and B. Schrank (1998).

O'Brien, Edna (1932– ), Irish novelist and short-story writer, born in the west of Ireland. Her first novel, The Country Girls (1960), describes the adventures of two girls who escape from their country homes and convent education to the addictive ‘crowds and lights and noise’ of Dublin. They continue their search for experience through The Lonely Girl (1962) and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1963). Her subsequent novels include August is a Wicked Month (1964), A PaganPlace (1971), Night (1972), Johnny I Hardly Knew You (1977), Time and Tide (1992), House of Splendid Isolation (1994), and In the Forest (2003). Her themes are female sensuality, male treachery, Irish nostalgia, and celebration of the intermittent ‘good times’ which even her much-abused and self-abusing heroines enjoy, and her lyrical descriptive powers and lack of inhibition have led to comparisons with Colette. Her short- story collections include A Scandalous Woman (1974), Mrs Reinhardt (1978), Returning (1982), Lantern Slides (1990), and A Fanatic Heart (1984 USA, 1985 UK). Mother Ireland (1976) is an autobiographical evocation of her native country.

O'Brien, Edna (1932– ) Irish novelist and short-story writer. Her novels, which include the trilogy The Country Girls (1960), The Lonely Girl (1962), and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964), are distinguished by their frank depiction of female sexuality. O'Brien's short-story collections include A Fanatic Heart (1984).