Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Kate O'Brien
-
Standard Name: O'Brien, Kate
Birth Name: Kate O'Brien
Married Name: Kate Renier
KOB
, twentieth-century Irish writer, was successively a journalist, playwright, novelist, essayist, travel writer, and biographer. She was, she said, influenced by the singing voice and by dance music. Masefield
said, Don't despise dance music; it is the music hearts break to.
qtd. in
Reynolds, Lorna. Kate O’Brien: A Literary Portrait. Colin Smythe; Barnes and Noble, 1987.
prelims
Her fiction often focuses on an Irish female protagonist's search for love and freedom. She shows such a quest as generally unsuccessful: love does not prove lasting, and spiritual and physical freedom often turn out to be mutually incompatible.
A century later, the writer Kate O'Brien
told a probably apocryphal story about the Alexander family's ecumenism. The Viceroy of Ireland, she says, wanted to have a strictly private and apparently casual word in confidence...
Dedications
E. M. Delafield
EMD
completed her last novel, Late and Soon. It was published by Macmillan
in April 1943 with a dedication to her friend Kate O'Brien
, who looked after her during her last months.
Delafield, E. M. Late and Soon. Macmillan, 1943.
prelims, 278
Powell, Violet. The Life of a Provincial Lady. Heinemann, 1988.
179
Fictionalization
E. M. Delafield
EMD
is commemorated by her friend, the novelist Kate O'Brien
in That Lady, published as a novel in 1946 and then as a play in 1949.
On her discharge a friend, the novelist Kate O'Brien
, moved into EMD
's home to help care for her. Before the end of this month EMD saw a neurological surgeon, who confirmed that she...
Friends, Associates
Antonia White
AW
made several new friends during her seventies. They included Sorbonne professor Gabriel Boucé
, the German poet Fred Marnau
and his wife Senta
, the novelist Kate O'Brien
, and the actress Elizabeth Sprigge
Intertextuality and Influence
Catherine Byron
As an Irish poet, CB
takes inspiration from traditional tales and myths, and from such Irish writers as W. B. Yeats
and Seamus Heaney
(though she does not consider either of them as role models...
The Mortal Storm became one of PB
's best-known and most popular books, though it received mixed reviews. Olga Owens
, a reviewer for the Boston Transcript, criticised her for being too political, claiming...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Taylor
Reviews of A Game of Hide and Seek included high praise from Marghanita Laski
and Elizabeth Bowen
(some consolation to ET
for her problems with her US publisher), but also carping which she found deeply...
Literary responses
Henry Handel Richardson
The Times Literary Supplement said HHR
had been scrupulous with the facts, had exercised the novelist's true function of revealing character by uncovering the secret places of the heart, and had revealed Cosima as the...
politics
Anna Wickham
In June 1938 she drew up, along with seven other women, a manifesto for The League for the Protection of the Imagination of Women.
Hepburn, James et al. “Anna Wickham: A Memoir”. The Writings of Anna Wickham, Free Woman and Poet, edited by Reginald Donald Smith, Virago Press, 1984, pp. 1-48.
27
The League's feminist mandate was to stimulate original work...
Publishing
E. M. Delafield
The success of the first Provincial Lady novel led to sequels: The Provincial Lady Goes Further in 1932, The Provincial Lady in America in 1934, and The Provincial Lady in Wartime in 1939. All four...