Edna O'Brien

Standard Name: O'Brien, Edna
Birth Name: Edna O'Brien
Throughout her career, contemporary Irish writer EOB has published novels, short stories, drama, screen and teleplays, poetry, travel writing, and children's books. Her imaginative writing, in which she experiments with linguistic and narrative conventions, almost always presents a woman's perspective. She often deals with such themes as personal and national identity, love affairs, exile, memory, and death. She is not a writer who caters to her readers' comfort, but concentrates steadily on the darker sides of life.
Colour photograph of Edna O'Brien speaking at the Hay-on-Wye Festival in 2016. She is seated on a wooden chair against a black backdrop with projected blue glowing trees. On a table in front of her are several books (including her recent "The Little Red Chairs"), a jug of water, drinking glasses, and a cloth of some kind. Her auburn hair is short and perkily styled; she wears berry-pink lipstick, a white chunky necklace, a black shirt and black sparkly cardigan, and holds her black-rimmed reading glas
Black-and-white photo of Edna O'brien, December 1970. Seated, she is wearing an eclectic coat with different textual patterns and black fur sleeves and collar. Her hair is back in a relaxed bouffant updo.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Penelope Mortimer
This plot, while anything but in tune with contemporary feminist demands for the sexual liberation of women, struck a chord with readers who felt the maternal role to be devalued in modern life by feminists...
Literary responses Anita Brookner
Edna O'Brien said that in this novel consummate emotion is met with flawless style.
Brookner, Anita. Hotel du Lac. Jonathan Cape.
jacket
Friends, Associates Antonia Fraser
Among many other writers, her long-term friends include V. S. Naipaul , Edna O'Brien , Alison Lurie (an American who spends much of her time in London), and Emma Tennant (who read Mary, Queen of...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

O’Brien, Edna. Returning. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982.
O’Brien, Edna. Saints and Sinners. Faber and Faber, 2011.
O’Brien, Edna. Seven Novels. Collins, 1978.
O’Brien, Edna, editor. Some Irish Loving. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979.
O’Brien, Edna. The Country Girls. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1960.
O’Brien, Edna. The High Road. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988.
O’Brien, Edna. The Little Red Chairs. Faber and Faber, 2015.
O’Brien, Edna. The Little Red Chairs. Faber and Faber, 2016.
O’Brien, Edna. The Lonely Girl. J. Cape, 1962.
O’Brien, Edna. The Love Object. J. Cape, 1968.
O’Brien, Edna. The Love Object: Selected Stories. Faber and Faber, 2013.
O’Brien, Edna. “The ogre of betrayal”. The Guardian, pp. Review 10 - 11.
O’Brien, Edna. Time and Tide. Viking, 1992.
O’Brien, Edna, and Richard Fitzgerald. Vanishing Ireland. J. Cape, 1986.
O’Brien, Edna. Virginia. Hogarth Press, 1981.
O’Brien, Edna. Wild Decembers. Houghton Mifflin, 1999.
O’Brien, Edna. Wild Decembers. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999.
O’Brien, Edna. “Writers’ Rooms”. theguardian.com.
O’Brien, Edna. “Writers’ rooms”. The Guardian, p. Review 3.
O’Brien, Edna. Zee & Co. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971.