LIFE AND WORKS:

Her mother died when Kate was only 5 years old and she was therefore sent to Laurel Hill Convent. After she has graduated at the University College of Dublin she begins to write for the "Manchester Guardian" and works as woman governor in Spain. She returns in England where she writes the play Distinguished Villa, 1926 that has a great success but she prefers to dedicate herself to novels. Her first novel Without my cloak, 1931 is a kind of report of the bourgeois life in Ireland. The heroin of Ante-Room, 1934 is torn between love and her strong catholic conscience as in Mary Lavelle, 1936. The novel The Land of Spices, 1941 was prohibited by censorship laws of the Free State of Ireland because it tells the life of the writers in her years at the convent. To the accusations of obscenity and indecency also received for the following works Kate O' Brien will answer writing Pray for the Wanderer, 1938 and The Last of Summer, 1943 in which she critics the pleased Puritanism of the Free State of Ireland under the guide of Eamon de Valera. 
The novel That Lady, 1946 is probably her largest best-seller: it is set in Spain on the sixteenth century; the protagonist, Ana de Mendoza, Prince of Eboli, are characterised by an independent spirit tormented by the King Phillip II. This work was also adapted to a Broadway comedy but had poor success one the 1949 performance.
In 1950 she returns to Ireland and she is settles in Roundstone, in county Galway and there she writes The Flower of May, 1953, but neither this neither As music and splendour, 1958, set in the Opera world of nineteenth century in Italy, are very successful. In 1962 she publishes My Ireland, a particular portrait of her country not so different from Farewell Spain, 1937 for which she was expelled from pro-Franco Spain. In 1965 she returns in England where she will remain until last days of her life.

BACK TO LITERATURE PAGE