Book Home >> Famous Authors >> Edna O'Brien

Edna O'Brien

Edna O'Brien is an internationally renowned Irish novelist and playwright whose works deal with moral, sexual, and social issues related to Irish life. Born into a Catholic family in 1932 in County Clare, Ireland, O'Brien's journey to becoming a celebrated author was a bumpy one. Despite facing many obstacles, her determination and spirit brought her international acclaim.

Early in her life, O'Brien always knew that writing was something she wanted to pursue. After completing primary and secondary school, she attended Marian College thanks to a scholarship and proceeded to write her first novel, 'The Country Girl'. The story of a young girl with ambitions of leaving her remote Irish home was immediately successful upon publication. However, it also provoked scandal and outrage due to its frank treatment of sexual themes. As a result, it was banned in Ireland and led to O' Brien being vilified in her home country for many years.

Nonetheless, O'Brien's books had a resounding impact and continue to be celebrated for the courage that she displayed in writing them. Her works form part of a collective western cultural appreciation of Ireland and an understanding of its gendered inequalities.

O'Brien has received numerous accolades throughout her career including the Irish PEN Award, the German Shakespeare Prize, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lannan Foundation. She has also become the fifth woman to be admitted into Ireland's prestigious Royal Irish Academy.

O'Brien's legacy is powerful. She has provided a space for voicing the experiences of women in Irish society, while standing up to the moralists who have tried to silence them. Her writing has opened and informed minds across the globe and has found its way into academia, film, television, and literature. Years later, her work is still being read and studied around the world, making O'Brien a true icon of Irish literature.

Edna has also written a number of critical works including in 2004, 'Perpetua: The Privilege of Youth', and in 2020 'Girl'. In addition to novels, O'Brien has also written a number of plays, primarily for London's West End, and even wrote the first one-woman play in Dublin.

In 2018, Edna O'Brien was awarded the PEN/Nabokov award for lifetime accomplishments in writing from PEN America, a global literary organization championing freedom of expression. She is also the recipient of numerous awards including an Honorary Doctor of Literature degree from Trinity College, Dublin in 1995, and in 2019 she was awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature, cited for her "himinely delicate art of storytelling".At 88 years of age, O'Brien is still writing profoundly moving works that explore human experience and challenging matters. Edna O'Brien is a remarkable woman whose commitment to both Irish and International literature shines brightly.

Bibliography

• The Country Girls Trilogy (1987)
• The Country Girls (1960)
• Girl with Green Eyes (1962)
• Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964)
• August Is a Wicked Month (1965)
• Casualties of Peace (1966)
• The Love Object (1968)
• A Pagan Place (1970)
• Zee & Co. (1971)
• Night (1972)
• Mother Ireland (1976)
• Johnny I Hardly Knew You (1977)
• Mrs Reinhardt and Other Stories (1978)
• Some Irish Loving (1979)
• A Fanatic Heart (1985)
• The High Road (1988)
• House of Splendid Isolation (1994)
• Down by the River (1996)
• James Joyce (1999)
• Wild Decembers (1999)
• In the Forest (2002)
• The Light of Evening (2006)
• Haunted (2009)
• Byron in Love (2009)
• Saints and Sinners (2011)