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Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, Silver Vale Hotel, Enniskerry, [county Wicklow] to Peter O’Mara. Kate is looking forward to going to Waddington’s to see an art exhibition. Her novel [The Flower of May] crawls forward at her usual slow opening pace. She is amused at an offer of one of her novels being turned into an opera.

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, Roundstone, [county Galway] to Peter O’Mara. Kate is making preparations for a visit from a cousin of the Lord Mayor of London. She has made several unsuccessful attempts to find a caretaker as she needs to be off, but does not know what to do about the house. She discusses at some length her overdraft of £3,000, her embarrassment at discovering Peter’s involvement in getting her out of trouble, the state of her affairs if she were to die tomorrow and the issue of inherited copyright. She complains against agents, whom she considers ‘ruffians’. She asks for news of Anne and Stephen, who are currently in the Mediterranean, and outlines her own plans to go and live in Rome in a flat recently rented there by Lorna Reynolds. Note that the letter is dated Monday 7 February, but in 1954 that date fell on a Sunday.

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, Croyle, Cullompton, Devon to Peter O’Mara. Kate is sorry about having been so engrossed in September with the last passages of her book [The Last of Summer] that she forgot Peter’s birthday.

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, Strand House, Limerick to Peter O’Mara. Kate wishes Peter a happy birthday and tells him that she and his mother are off to explore Bunratty Castle with the local antiquarian. She misses Peter’s wireless set, which enabled her to follow all the news beautifully during the first days of the war.

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, Harcourt Cottage, North Leigh, Witney, Oxon to Peter O’Mara. Kate outlines her plans for the Christmas holidays, which involve a trip to Norfolk to stay with the O’Neills. She tells him about her new Viennese neighbour, a dealer in old masters, who has taken a strong liking to some of Mary O’Neill’s pictures, which are hanging on Kate’s walls, and wants to see about arranging an exhibition of her work in Oxford in the spring. She talks about the refugees now living in the village and of the Persian cat who lives next door.

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, 177 The Street, Boughton, Faversham, Kent to Peter and Mary O’Mara. Kate thanks them for their invitation to see Fidelio in London and regrets that she will be in Ireland at the suggested time doing recordings at Radio Éireann and lecturing at Galway University.

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, Strand House, Limerick to Peter and Mary O’Mara. Kate wishes the couple a happy third wedding anniversary and encloses a modest gift, regretting the underlying grief of the day [the death of Peter’s father, Stephen O’Mara, on 11 November 1959]. The letter has been signed ‘Uncle Kate’.

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, [177 The Street], Boughton, [Faversham, Kent] to May O’Brien and Anne O’Mara. She apologises for doing what their brother Eric sometimes did when writing home, using a carbon sheet to write two letters in one. She reminds her sisters of the forthcoming broadcast of Without My Cloak on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday [19 April]. She apologises for the brevity of her letter, but she has an article to get off for the Irish Times, besides which she feels uncomfortable about her two-in-one letter.

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, Croyle, Cullompton, Devon to May O’Brien. Kate is staying with the Dashwoods [Paul Dashwood and his wife Monica, the English author who wrote under the pseudonym E. M. Delafield], who keep urging her to stay on. She keeps yielding from week to week, because she finds the freedom to do nothing else but think about her novel [The Last of Summer] very useful.

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, 10 Buckingham Street, Adelphi, London WC2 to May O’Brien. The letter is mostly concerned with The Last of Summer, the rehearsals of which have hit a crisis as Jill Furse, who was playing Angèle, has discovered she is pregnant. As a consequence, rehearsals are held up until a replacement for her is found, and the start of the provincial tour has been postponed until 17 April.