Kate O'Brien (1) [1897–1974]

Kate O'Brien was born in Limerick, Ireland. When she was five years old, her mother died, and she was sent to board at a convent school. She studied English and French at University College, Dublin, and after graduation moved to London. She worked as a governess in Spain, where she began to write, and then returned to England and got a job as a journalist for the Manchester Guardian. With the success of her 1926 play Distinguished Villa, she became a full-time writer. Her first novel, Without My Cloak (1931), won both the Hawthornden and James Tait Black prizes. The Ante-Room (1934) and The Land of Spices (1941), which explored themes of female sexuality, were banned in the Irish Free State. Her books Pray for the Wanderer (1938) and The Last of Summer (1943) criticized what she saw as the smug puritanism of her native country. Her most successful novel was the anti-fascist That Lady (1946). It was adapted as a Broadway play in 1949 and as a film in 1955. She returned to live in Ireland in 1950 but went back to England in 1965. In addition to novels and plays, she wrote film scripts, short stories, essays, two biographies, and very personal travelogues of Ireland and Spain.