Edna O'Brien
...Girls Trilogy" (1960-64). Due to the historic, conservative and mythological writings of catholic authors, several of O'Brien's books, dealing with murder, childhood and disappointments in sexual love, have been banned in Ireland. Her works have gained wide acclaim, particularly among American readers.
"They used to ban my books, but now when I go there, people are courteous to my face,
though rather slanderous behind my back. Then again, Ireland has changed. There are a
lot of young people who are irreligious, or less religious. Ironically, they wouldn't be
interested in my early books - they would think them gauche. They are aping English and
American mores. If I went to a dance hall in Dublin now, I would feel as alien as in a
disco in Oklahoma." (Craig, 43)
Edna O'Brien was born in Twamgraney, County Clare. Her family was opposed to anything to do with literature and later she described her small village "enclosed, fervid and bigoted." When O'Brien was a student in Dublin and her mother found a book of Sean O'Casey in her suitcase she wanted to burn it. After finishing primary school O'Brien was educated at the Convent of Mercy in Loughrea (1941-46). In Dublin she worked in a pharmacy, and studied at the Pharmaceutical College at night. During this period she wrote small pieces for the Irish Press. In 1950 she was awarded a licence as pharmacist. Married in the summer of 1954, O'Brien moved with her husband, the Czech/Irish writer Ernest Gébler, and two sons to London. In Ireland she read such writers Tolstoy, Thackeray, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Of the connection between her writing and her life, O'Brien says, "It is as if the life lived has not been lived until it is set down in this unconscious sequence of words." The first book O'Brien ever bought was Introducing James Joyce by T.S. Eliot. She has said that Joyce's Portrait of the Artist made...
View Full Essay
