Showing 33661 results

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, 33 Great James Street, [London] to Anne O’Mara. Kate informs Anne that she is going into the Florence Nightingale Hospital to have a small operation to repair a displacement of her right ovary and ovarian tube.

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, 33 Great James Street, London WC1 to Anne O’Mara. Kate thanks Anne for her kind invitation and outlines her plans to spend the summer in Ireland as long as she can get certain things off her mind before departure. She complains that times are very bad and that people in her profession are going through an awful period. She will try to let her flat for the summer although the scare of war makes people unwilling to occupy a top flat in a shaky old house like hers. She and Clare discuss European wars and rumours whenever they meet, and she worries what may happen to Europe in the end. She notes that all the treatments are over and she is very well now. She extends her love to Peter, who has been sent to board at Clongowes [Wood College].

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, End Farm to Anne O’Mara. Kate mentions the surrender of France to Germany [on 14 June] and the evacuees who have arrived in North Leigh. She is very busy with work, but all sorts of things are going wrong as they are bound to do during war. She claims that Italy’s entry into the war has cost her a dead loss of twenty guineas. She expects Clare to have been evacuated from London by now. Both of them are engrossed in the events of the war.

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, Harcourt Cottage, North Leigh, Witney, Oxon to Anne O’Mara. Kate thanks Anne for her present of cosmetics. She is upset, having had her thank-you letter to Aunt Fan returned from the censor’s office with a printed admonition. She is pleased to hear glowing reports of Clare’s holiday in Ireland and is looking forward to meeting her the following weekend. She thanks Anne for relating to her Dr Browne’s praise of her book. She asks for family news.

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, 10 Buckingham Street, London WC2 to Anne O’Mara. Kate’s play has had a mixed reception from the press, but the audience seem to like it. Unfortunately, the appearance of the flying bomb [pilotless aircraft] in London has doomed ticket sales. However, it has made Kate some money and there have been cautious enquiries about film rights. She plans to retreat to the country to attend to her neglected novel [That Lady]. She mentions her new friends Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt, who know her novels practically by heart and are full of theatrical plots. She is angered by Ivor Brown’s comments about life in Ireland, having herself for many years tried to propagate civilised Irish life in her novels.

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, 177 The Street, Boughton, Faversham, Kent to Anne O’Mara. Kate thanks Anne for her gift of £200 and gives her an account of how the money has been spent. She discusses her agent David Higham, and her attempts to get some of her books reprinted cheaply in Ireland. She acknowledges that in her erratic life Anne has been a constant which Kate feels she has not deserved. She will never forget that having Anne for a sister has been her good fortune in her otherwise unlucky life.

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, 177 The Street, Boughton, Faversham, Kent, to Anne O’Mara. The letter deals with Kate’s share of Clare’s bequest, which she needs for the Inland Revenue, and gives a brief outline of her financial status and prospects.

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, 8 Richmond Road, Oxford to Anne O’Mara. Kate thanks Anne for her Christmas wishes and apologises for not writing sooner, but she is in a rush to finish the Mary Magdalen script. She is hoping to return to Ireland before the end of the month as she has to read a piece on Hanna Sheehy Skeffington [to the Women’s Social and Progressive League] in Dublin on the 29th. Lacking last page(s).

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, End Farm to Anne O’Mara. She apologises for not having written sooner owing to her typewriter having been in Oxford for repairs. She asks about the family’s Easter festivities and encloses a photo (now not present) of Ruth and Peter Whitehead. She discusses their wedding, the bride’s parents and the couple’s plans for the future.

Typed letter from Kate O’Brien, Harcourt Cottage, North Leigh, Witney, Oxon to Anne O’Mara. Kate complains about a variety of borrowed typewriters, which are giving her a hard time. She mentions a favourable review of her book [The Land of Spices] in the Evening Standard, the only one she has seen so far and hopes that this latest work is lucky, although she cannot expect it to be a very popular book. She mentions the Memories of Childhood broadcasts on Radio Éireann on Sunday nights and that hers will be broadcast on 16 February. She asks Anne not to worry about Kate and Clare as no community as brave and calm as theirs can be beaten by a man like Hitler.