A pioneer in Irish fiction, Kate O’Brien was born in Limerick on 3 December 1897 to horse-dealer Thomas O’Brien and his wife, Catherine Thornhill O’Brien. One of ten children, O’Brien had three older sisters, Mary, Clare and Nance (or Anne), and six brothers, John (or Jack), Thomas, Eric, Michael, Michael Alphonsus and Gerard William. Tragedy struck the young family in 1903 when Catherine O’Brien died of cancer. Kate O’Brien was just over five years of age at this time and was to become the youngest boarder at Laurel Hill, a French convent school in Limerick. O’Brien’s father passed away in 1916, and in that same year Kate received a county council scholarship to read French and English in University College Dublin.
Kate O’Brien graduated from University College Dublin with a B.A. degree in 1919, moving to England where she worked as a free-lance journalist for The Sphere, followed by a position in the foreign language department of The Manchester Guardian Weekly. In 1921, O’Brien moved to London, and taught at St. Mary’s Convent in Hampstead for approximately six months before travelling to the United States as a companion to her sister Nance and her husband Stephen O’Mara. O’Brien returned from the States in 1922 but this did not mark the end of her travels, moving to Spain that same year to work as a governess in Bilbao. O’Brien taught the children of the Areilza family over a ten-month period, forming a deep attachment to Spain that was to remain with her for the rest of her days. Returning to London in 1923, she married a young Dutchman, Gustaff Renier. However, this union was only to last eleven months before the couple separated.
Spanning nearly fifty years, Kate O’Brien’s literary career commenced in 1926 with the play Distinguished Villa. O’Brien’s first work was the result of a bet with a friend that she could write a play within a number of weeks. It was performed at the Aldwych Theatre in London on 2 May 1926 and was met with wide acclaim. Several other plays followed in 1927, including The Silver Roan, The Bridge and Set in Platinum. It was her first novel, Without My Cloak (published in 1931), however, that established O’Brien as a significant Irish writer. A chronicle of the Considine family, this work was awarded the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 1934, O’Brien produced her second novel, The Ante-Room. This was followed two years later by its unsuccessful adaptation for the stage in London’s Queen Theatre, and in addition, the first of two works to be banned by the Censorship of Publications Board in Ireland, a novel entitled Mary Lavelle. Also addressing the subject of Spain is the highly personal travelogue Farewell Spain published in 1937, largely in response to the events surrounding the Spanish Civil War. This work was subsequently banned in Franco’s Spain and the author was forbidden access to the country until 1957 with the intervention of the Irish Ambassador to Spain. O’Brien’s play The Schoolroom Window was performed that same year at the Manuscript Theatre Club in London.
In 1938, O’Brien’s fourth novel, Pray for the Wanderer was published, and followed two years later by The Land of Spices, her second work to be banned in Ireland. O’Brien spent the early years of the Second World War in Oxford and London, working for the British Ministry of Information. The writer moved to Devon in 1942 boarding in the house of novelist, E.M. Delafield, and over the next year published The Last of Summer, which was performed as a play at the Phoenix Theatre in London and the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin between 1944 and 1945. The publication English Diaries and Journals was produced in 1943. O’Brien’s seventh novel, That Lady, was published in 1946. A great success, this work was published in North America as For One Sweet Grape. The novel was adapted for the stage in November 1949, directed by Guthrie McClintic and starring Katherine Cornell as Ana de Mendoza. The play opened in the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway, and in 1955, the novel was made into a motion picture.
Kate O’Brien returned to live in Ireland in 1950, buying a handsome property in Roundstone, county Galway. O’Brien continued to be productive in her new surroundings publishing her biographical work Teresa of Avila in 1951, followed by her eighth novel, The Flower of May in 1953. The writer travelled to Rome in Italy in the early months of 1954 in preparation for what was to become her ninth and final published novel, As Music and Splendour. A decade after her move to Roundstone, O’Brien returned to England, settling in Boughton, Kent. Whilst the 1960s did not yield any further fictional work, O'Brien produced another travelogue entitled My Ireland in 1962. A collection of reminiscences of her early family life, entitled Presentation Parlour, followed in 1963. In addition, the writer produced articles for different publications including her ‘Long Distance’ series in the Irish Times. O’Brien was involved with numerous literary organisations during her lifetime including P.E.N. and the Comunità Europea degli Scrittori (where she represented Ireland). Kate O’Brien died in Kent on 13 August 1974, aged 76, leaving behind a body of unfinished work including her memoirs and what would have been her tenth novel, Constancy.
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