1930- [Josephine Edna]; b. 15 Dec., Tuamgraney, Co. Clare; ed. Scarriff Nat. School, Loughrea Convent of Mercy; Dublin Pharmaceutical College; thereafter worked briefly as a pharmacist; met Ernest Gébler Davies, and m. 12 July 1954 [var. 1952]; settled in London, 1959 [var. 1958]; divorced, 1964 [var. 1967]; two children, Carlo and Sasha; began writing realistic novels dealing with the story of Caithleen Brady, growing up among the puritanical and hypocritical pressures of rural Ireland in The Country Girls (1960), followed by The Lonely Girl (1962), which was banned in Ireland, and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1963); August is a Wicked Month (1964), a study of a separated woman whose husband and son are killed while she is having a holiday affair in France; maintained a home in London from 1965; issued A Pagan Place (1970), the second-person story of Emma’s pregnancy and her abuse by family, church (Fr. Declan), and community, returning to the subject-matter of the trilogy; Night (1972) a woman’s reconstruction of her past, written in the second person; The High Road (1988), set on a Spanish island, where a waitress falls in love with the central character, a woman visitor, and is killed by her jealous husband; short story collections incl. The Love Object (1968), A Scandalous Woman (1974), Returning (1982), and Lantern Slides (1988); The Fanatic Heart (1982), a volume of selected stories; also a miscellany of her writing, Mrs Reinhardt and Other Stories (1978); has written plays and screenplays incl. X, Y and Zee, filmed with Elizabeth Taylor (1972); A Pagan Place, a two-act play, was staged in London and new Haven, Conn. (1972, 1974) and issued by Faber (1973); issued Mother Ireland (1976), a commentary on Ireland, with photographs by Fergus Bourke; Time and Tide (1992), semi-autobiographical novel in which Nell is forced to leave her cruel husband and wins a custody battle but faces crushing tragedy; issued House of Splendid Isolation (1994) a novel about the relationship between an IRA-man (McGreevy) on the run and the woman (Josie) whose delapidated he commandeers to hide in; received Prize of European Council, formerly awarded to Boulez and Menuhin, 1995; began to visit Arran Island cottage annually; Down by the River (1996), novel concerning concerns father-daughter sexual abuse involving the fictional Mary McNamara, a 14-year girl, and based on the ' X Case' that gave rise to an Irish constitutional crisis in 1992 connected with the anti-Abortion Amendment; a third novel in the trilogy about contemporary Ireland, entitled Wild Decembers (1999), deals with a murder over a piece of land; guest writer at Kerry International Summer School (KISS), 1996; lives in London and frequently travels to US; writer in residence teaching at SUNY (State Univ. of New York), 1997-98 and frequent contributor to New Yorker; issued James Joyce (1999); receives Literary Award of the Ireland Fund of America, at O’Reilly Hall, 2000; issued The Forest (2002), a fictional version of the Brendan O’Donnell murders of 1994, set in Cluais Wood, and published in face of opposition from the family of Imelda Riney [here Eily] (victim of the tragedy with her son Liam); sometime winner of PEN award for life-time achievement. DIW DIL OCEL FDA G20 OCIL
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Works
Novels, The Country Girls (London: Hutchinson 1960; Harmondsworth: Penguin 1963, &c.; Bloomsbury 1995), French trans. as La Jeune Irlandaise (Paris: Julliard 1960); The Lonely Girl (London: Jonathan Cape; NY: Random Hse. 1962), Do., rep. as The Girl With Green Eyes, Penguin 1964), French trans. as Jeune filles seules (Paris: Presses de la Cité 1962); Girls in their Married Bliss (London: Jonathan Cape; NY: Simon & Schuster 1964; Harmondsworth: Penguin 1967); August is A Wicked Month (London: Jonathan Cape; NY: Simon & Schuster 1965; Harmondsworth: Penguin 1967), trans. in French as Le Joli Mois d’Août (Paris: Gallimard 1968); Casualties of Peace (London: Jonathan Cape 1966; NY: Simon & Schuster 1967; Harmondsworth: Penguin 1968); A Pagan Place (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; NY: Knopf 1970; Harmondsworth: Penguin 1971), French trans. as Les Païens d’Irlande (Paris: Gallimard 1973); Night (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1972 [var.1971]; NY: Alfred A. Knopf 1973; Harmondsworth: Penguin 1974); Johnny, I Hardly Knew You (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1977), Do., pub. in America as as I Hardly Knew You (NY: Doubleday 1978); Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue (NY: Farrar Straus 1986; London: Jonathan Cape 1987); The High Road (Weidenfeld & Nicolson; NY: Farrar Straus 1988), 180pp. [ded. ‘To my grandson Jack Redmond Gébler]; House of Splendid Isolation (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1994; Orion 1995), 222pp.; Do. (NY: Plume 1995); Down by the River (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1996), 265pp.; Wild Decembers (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1999), 253pp.; In the Forest (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson 2002), 218pp.
Short stories, The Love Object and Other Stories (London: Jonathan Cape; NY: Knopf 1968); A Scandalous Woman and Other Stories (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; NY: Harcourt Brace, Jovanovich 1974) [9 stories]; Mrs Reinhardt and Other Stories (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1978), Do., pub. in America as A Rose in the Heart (NY: Doubleday 1979) [incl. ‘Clara’; ‘A Woman at the Seaside’; ‘Mrs Reinhardt’; ‘The Connor Girls’; ‘Imelda’; et al.); Returning: A Collection of Tales (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1982); A Fanatic Heart: Selected Stories (NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1984; London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1985) [incl. ‘A Scandalous Woman’, ‘Irish Revel’, ‘The Connor Girls’, ‘The Small-Town Lovers’, et al.]; Lantern Slides (NY: Farrar Straus; London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1990), 223pp.; Time and Tide (NY & London: Viking 1992), 325pp. See also The Collected Edna O’Brien (London: Collins 1978) [miscellany].
Commentary, Mother Ireland (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; NY: Harcourt Brace 1976), ill. by Fergus Bourke [photos]; Arabian Days (NY: Horizon Press; London: Quartet 1977) [var. 1978], with photos by Gerard Klijn; James and Nora: A Portrait of Joyce’s Marriage (Northridge California: Lord John Ress 1981); Vanishing Ireland, photographs by Richard Fitzgerald (NY: Potter-Crown 1987); contrib., ‘Edna O’Brien’, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl (1986; Mandarin 1990), pp.131-141 [RTE copyright 1985]; James Joyce (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1999; rep. Phoenix 2000), 190pp.
Stage plays, A Cheap Bunch of Nice Flowers [performed London 1962], in Plays of the Year 1962-63 (London: Elek; NY: Ungar 1963); Zee & Co. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1971); A Pagan Place [prod. London 1972, New Haven, Conn. 1974] (London: Faber & Faber 1973; Washington: Graywolf Press 1984)), adapted from 1970 novel; The Gathering (prod. Dublin 1974; NY 1977), The Ladies (London 1975); Virginia [produced Stratford Ontario, 1980; London and NY, 1981] (London: Hogarth Press; NY: Harcourt Brace 1981); Flesh and Blood (Bath 1985; NY 1986); Madame Bovary [adaptation of Flaubert, 1987]; Virginia (1981); Iphigenia [of] Euripides (London: Methuen 2003).
Screenplays, X, Y and Zee (1972) [filmed with Liz Taylor] adapted from Zee and Co (1971 [var.1972]); adpt. of The Lonely Girl as The Girl with Green Eyes (1964); Time Lost and Time Remembered, with Desmond Davis [alt. I Was Happy Here, 1965] (1966), from short story; Andrea Newman’s novel Three Into Two Won’t Go (1968 [var. 1969]), for film; The Tempter, with others (1975); The Country Girls (1984). Also TV, The Wedding Dress [TV 1963], publ. in Mademoiselle (NY Nov. 1963); The Keys of the Café (1965); Give My Love Some Pilchards (1965); Which of These Two Ladies is He Married To? (1967); Nothing’s Ever Over (1968); Then and Now (1973); Mrs. Reinhardt (1981), from the story.
For children, A Christmas Treat (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1982); The Rescue (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1983); The Dazzle (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1981); Tales for the Telling: Irish Folk and Fairy Stories (1987) [var. 1986], ill. Michael Foreman.
Poetry, On the Bone (Warwick: Greville Press 1989).
Contributions (selected): ‘Dear Mr Joyce’, inJohn Ryan, ed., A Bash in the Tunnel (Clifton Books 1970), [infra]; ‘A Reason of One’s Own’, Times Saturday Review (30 Sept 1972) [q.pp.]; ‘Why Irish Heroines Don’t Have to Be Good Anymore’, New York Book Review (11 May 1986), p.13; ‘Joyce’s Odyssey, New Yorker [‘The Critics’ series] (7 June 1999), pp.82-91; also review of Brenda Maddox, Georgie’s Ghosts (1999), in New Yorker (27 Sept. 1999), pp.92-98; ‘Forbidden’, in New Yorker [Fiction] (20 March 2000), pp.116-20 [infra].
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Criticism
Nell Dunn, ‘Edna’, in Talking to Women (London: MacGibbon & Kee 1965), pp.69-107.
Bruce Arnold, review of The Lonely Girls [with novels by Jack White], in The Dubliner (July-Aug. 1962).
Bruce Arnold, ‘Censorship and Edna O’Brien’, in The Irish Times (21 Nov. 1966).
Sean McMahon, ‘A Sex by Themselves, An Interim Report on the Novels of Edna O’Brien’, Éire-Ireland 2 (1967).
Edna O’Brien talks to David Heycock, Listener (7 May 1970), p.616.
‘Dialogue with Edna O’Brien’, in Under Bow Bells: Dialogues with Joseph McCulloch (London: Sheldon Press 1974).
Grace Eckley, Edna O’Brien [Brief Monographs Ser.] (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP 1974) [incl. Selected Bibliography, p.86].
William Trevor, “Edna O’Brien”, in: Contemporary Novelists [2nd edition] (London & New York: St James Press [Macmillan], 1976), p.1052.
Roy Foster, review of Mother Ireland, in Times Literary Supplement (4 June 1976), p. 673.
Richard Eder, review of Mother Ireland by Edna O’Brien, New York Times Book Review (19 Sept. 1976), p.6.
John Broderick, review of Mother Ireland, in The Critic, 35 (Winter 1976), pp.72-73.
Denis Donoghue, review of Mother Ireland, in New York Review of Books 23 (14 Oct. 1976), p. 12.
John Broderick, review of Mother Ireland in The Critic, 35 (Winter 1976), pp.72-73.
Sean MacMahon, ‘A Sex by themselves: An intermim report on the novels of Edna O’Brien’, Éire-Ireland (Spring 1967), pp.79-87.
Raymonde Popot, ‘Edna O’Brien’s Paradise Lost’, in Patrick Rafroidi & Maurice Harmon, eds., The Irish Novel in Our Time [Cahiers Irlandaises, 4-5] (l’Université de Lille 1976), pp.255-85.
Lotus Snow, ‘“That Trenchant Childhood Route?” Quest in Edna O’Brien’s Novels’, in Éire-Ireland 14, no. 1 (Spring 1979), pp.74-83.
Kevin P. Reilly, ‘Irish Literary Autobiography: The Goddesses That Poets Dream Of’, in Éire-Ireland 16.3 (Fall 1981), pp.57-80.
Darcy O’Brien, ‘Edna O’Brien: A Kind of Irish Childhood’, in Thomas F. Staley, ed., Twentieth-century Women Novelists (NJ: Barnes & Noble 1982), pp.179-90.
James Cahalan, Irish Novel (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988), pp.286-89 and passim.
‘Edna O’Brien’ in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl, ed. John Quinn (1986), pp.131-44; notice in Contemporary Novelists, ed. DL Kirkpatrick, (NY 1986).
Shusha Guppy, ‘Interview with Edna O’Brien’, Paris Review, 92 (Summer 1984), pp.22-50.
Donncha Ó Dulaing, ed., Voices of Ireland: Conversations with Famous Irish People from De Valera to Edna O’Brien (Dublin: O’Brien Press/RTÉ 1984) [q.pp.].
Philip Roth, ‘A Conversation with Edna O’Brien’, New York Times Book Review (18 Nov. 1984), pp. 38-40.
James M. Haule, ‘Tough Luck, The Unfortunate Birth of Edna O’Brien’, in Colby Library Quarterly, 23, 4 (Dec. 1987), pp.216-24.
Peggy [Margaret] O’Brien, ‘The Silly and the Serious: An Assessment of Edna O’Brien’, in Massachusetts Review, 28, 3 (Autumn 1987), pp.474-88.
Charles E. Claffey, ‘The Vision of Edna O’Brien’ [interview] Boston Globe (27 Nov. 1988), p.B1.
Mary Salmon, ‘Edna O’Brien’, in Rüdiger Imhof, ed., Contemporary Irish Novelists [Studies in English and Comparative Literature, ed. Michael Kenneally and Wolfgang Zach] (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag 1990), pp.143-58.
Interview in Julia Carlson, ed., Banned in Ireland (Georgia UP; London: Routledge 1990), pp.71-79.
Patricia Craig, ‘Against Ample Adversities’, review of Time and Tide in Times Literary Supplement (18 Sept. 1992), p.23.
‘School was madder than Jean Brodie: Edna O’Brien talks to Ray Connolly’, in The Times Saturday Review [‘A Childhood’, feature-column and interview-article introducing Lantern Slides (23 June 1990), p.62.
Eileen Battersby, interview with Edna O’Brien, Irish Times ‘Weekend’ (12 Sept 1992).
Rebecca Pelan, ‘Edna O’Brien’s “Stage-Irish” Persona: An “Act” of Resistance’, in Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (July 1993), pp.67-85.
Werner Huber, ‘Myth and Motherland: Edna O’Brien’s Mother Ireland’, in Donald E. Morse, et al., eds,. A Small Nation’s Contribution to the World (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1993), pp.175-82 [incl. bibliography].
Kiera O’Harra, ‘Love Objects: Love and Obsession in the Stories of Edna O’Brien’, in Studies in Short Fiction, 10 (1993), pp.317-25.
James F. Clarity, ‘Casting a Cold Eye on Irish Life and Death’, [interview] in The New York Times (9 Jan. 1995), ‘Books’, B1 & B6.
Amanda Graham, ‘The Lovely Substance of the Mother: Food, Gender and Nation in the work of Edna O’Brien’, Irish Studies Review, No. 15 (Summer 1996), pp.16-20.
Michael Patrick Gillespie, ‘She was too Scrupulous Always: Edna O’Brien and the Comic Tradition’, in Theresa O’Connor, ed., The Comic Tradition in Irish Women Writers (Florida UP 1996), pp.108-23.
Berenice Schrank, ed., The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 22, 2 [“Edna O’Brien Special Issue”] (Dec. 1996).
Nicholas A. Basbanes, ‘O’Brien Writes of Homeland’, in The Gainesville Sun (15 June, 1997).
James M. Cahlan, Double Vision: Women and Men in Modern and Contemporary Irish Fiction (Syracuse: Syracuse UP 1999), 234pp.
Rory Brennan, review of James Joyce (1999), in Books Ireland (Feb. 2000), pp. 17-18.
Veronica Lee, ‘O’Brien’: “The Anger of Heaven is Nothing to the Anger of Men” [interview-article on Iphigenia], in The Independent [UK] (9 Feb. 2003).
Christine St. Peter, ‘Petrifying Time: Incest Narratives from Contemporary Ireland’, in Liam Harte, & Michael Parker, Contemporary Irish Fiction: Themes, Tropes, Theories (London: Macmillan 2000).
See also Aveen McManus, “Narratives of Childhood - A Comparative Study” (MA Diss., Univ. of Ulster 2005) [with Mary Costello, Frances Molloy, Jennifer Johnston, David Park, Glenn Patterson, Seamus Deane, Patrick MacCabe].
David Hanly, interview with Edna O’Brien, ‘Writer in Profile’ RTÉ 1, 9.30pm, 20 May 1992.
Katie Donovan, review of James Joyce (Phoenix), in The Irish Times ([21 Oct. 2000]).
Christine St. Peter, ‘Petrifying Time: Incest Narratives from Contemporary Ireland’, in Liam Harte, & Michael Parker, Contemporary Irish Fiction: Themes, Tropes, Theories (London: Macmillan 2000).
Patricia Craig notices Edna O’Brien, James Joyce (Phoenix), in Times Literary Supplement, "In Brief: Biography" (22 Dec. 2000), calling it ‘a pungent and high-spirited contribution to Joyce studies.’
Fintan O’Toole, ‘A fiction text too far’, article [not review] on Edna O’Brien, in The Irish Times [Weekend], 2 March, 2002, p.1.
Eddie Holt, TV Review, The Irish Times [Weekend], 18 May 2002.
Mary Morrisey, review of Edna O’Brien, In the Forest (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson), in The Irish Times [Weekend], 23 March, 2002.
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Notes
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, selects "Number 10", from Mrs Reinhardt and Other Stories [1043-46]; BIOG, 1134, [FDA COMM as supra]
Elaine Showalter, A Literature of their Own (1984), , Bio-note: 1936- in b. Co. Clare; trained at Pharmaceutical College, Dublin; m. Ernest Gebler in 1962, divorced; two children; first novel, The Country Girls (1960).
A. N. Jeffares & Anthony Kamm, eds., An Irish Childhood, An Anthology (Collins 1987), contains excerpt;
Shena Mackay, Such Devoted Sisters: An Anthology of Stories (Virago 1994), selects ‘Irish Revel’. See also Patricia Craig, ed., The Oxford Book of Modern Women’s Stories (1995), 538pp.
Kevin Rockett, et al., eds, Cinema & Ireland (1988), lists The Country Girls (1983), being a film of Edna O’Brien’s The Lonely Girl), also discusses financing of same, p.125, n59; Anthony Slide, The Cinema and Ireland (1988), discusses The Lonely Girl (1962), filmed 1964, with Rita Tushingham, Peter Finch, and Lynn Redgrave, as the directorial debut of Desmond Davies (p.66); also I Was Happy Here (1965), based on Edna O’Brien story and dir. Davies (p.112).
Helena Sheehan, Irish Television Drama: A Society and Its Stories (RTE 1987), lists TV film, A Cheap Bunch of Nice Flowers, dir Shelah Richards (1975); also Irish Revel, dir Deirdre Friel (1975).
Beckettian: Mother Ireland (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1976; Penguin 1978), adopts an epigraph from Samuel Beckett ‘Let me say before I go any further that I forgive nobody. I wish them all an atrocious life and then the fires and ice of hell and in the execrable generations to come an honoured name.’ (Malone Dies.)
Photo-portrait of O’Brien in London in 1971 is to be found in John Minihan, An Unweaving of Rainbows: Images of Irish Writers (London: Souvenir Press 1998), 128pp.
Peter Connolly: Interview with Julia Carlson, ed., Banned in Ireland (Georgia UP; London: Routledge 1990), pp.71-79, cites Sean McMahon, ‘A Sex by Themselves, An Interim Report on the Novels of Edna O’Brien’, Éire-Ireland 2 (1967), which includes an account of Peter Connolly’s defence of Edna O’Brien at a public meeting in Limerick 1966.
Intertextuality?: ’[T]the ground easing back up, gorse prickles on her scalp and nothing ever the same again and a feeling as of having half-died. (p.5-6; see Quotations, supra.) Note a clear precedent for the phrase ‘nothing ever the same again’ in Frank O’Connor’s ‘Guest of the Nation’; note also a ‘snow’ scene, à la Joyce’s Dubliners, and a Joycean epigraph.
Controversy: The Forest (2002), a novel concerning Brendan O’Donnell’s the murder of Imelda and Liam Riney and Fr Joe Walsh in Co. Clare in 1994, met with the opposition of the family of Ms. Riney.
Non-isolationist: Edna O’Brien described Gerry Adams in one American paper as ‘thoughtful and reserved, a lithe, handsome man [...] Given a different incarnation in a different century, one could imagine him as one of those monks transcribing the gospel into Gaelic.’ (See James Adams, ‘Kneecapped!: How Gerry Adams’ US visit crippled the special relationship’, Sunday Times, 6 Feb. 1994, pp.10-11.) See also Edna O’Brien, report on Gerry Adams, in Irish Independent (Sat., 5 Feb. 1993) and Books of the Year [notices], Irish Times Weekend (30 Nov. 2002), portrait-caption: ‘her novel, In the Forest, is “well-written and riveting”, says Gerry Adams’.
In the Forest: ‘One of the victims of a paedophile priest unmasked by the Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, last weekend, was triple murderer Brendan O’Donnell, a new book is to reveal. [...] O’Donnell was convicted of their murders in 1996 and died one year later, at the Central Mental Hospital, following an overdose. He was 23.’ (Irish Times report, 25 July 2004.) The report names Fr. Tom McNamara are the abuser-priest and Ms Imelda Riney, her three-year old son Liam and Father Joe Walsh as O’Donnell’s victims.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)