Famous O'Briens in History
| KATE O'BRIEN - (1897-1974) NOVELIST AND DRAMATIST |
| .Born in Limerick; educated at Laurel Hill Convent, Limerick, and UCD. Worked in London as a jounalist and then as a teacher. After a period in Washington as secretary to James O'Mara, who was organising a Dail Eireann loan for De Valera, she went to Spain as a governess. In 1924 she returned to London and married a young Dutchman, Gustav Renier, author of " Are the English Really Human?" The marriage was not a success. Her writing career began in 1926 with a play, "Distinguished Villas" which ran in London for three months. Her first novel, "Without My Cloak", set in Limerick among the prosperous merchant class, appeared in 1931 and received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Hawthornden Prize. It was followed by " The Anteroom" (1934) and "Mary Lavelle" (1936). In 1937 she published a travel book "Farewell Spain". Her novel "The Land of Spices" (1941) was banned by the Censorship Board. During the Second World War she worked in the Ministry of Information in London. "The Last of Summer" appeared in 1943, and a historical novel set in Spain "That Lady" was published in 1946. She was refused entry to Spain for some years because of her treatment of Philip II in that novel. It was dramatised in 1949 and played on Broadway with Katherine Cornell in the lead. In 1946 whe won the Irish Women Writer's Club prize for her novel "For One Sweet Grape", and in 1947 she was elected a member of the IAL. In 1950 she bought a house at Roundstone Co. Galway, and lived there until 1961. She continued to write novels, publishing " The Flower of May" in 1953 and " As Music and Splendour", her last in 1958. " English Diaries and Journals" appeared in 1943 and "My Ireland" in 1962. She returned to England in 1961 and lived in the village of Boughton, not far from Canterbury. She visited Ireland and Spain regularly, having been allowed into Spain in 1957 through intervention of the Irish ambassador. Died in hospital in Canterbury on 13 August 1974. |
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