Credited with revolutionising Irish literature, her debut novel, The Country Girls, was denounced by the country’s Archbishop for its candid depiction of women’s sex lives.
The book was banned, ceremonially burned, and led to calls of O’Brien to be kicked naked through the streets of County Clare. But scandal made her a star. Living in London suburbia, the literary sensation became a mainstay of the swinging sixties set, partying with Princesses and enjoying affairs with Hollywood actors.
Amid the debauchery and dilettantes, though, O’Brien remained a fierce chronicler of cutting-edge fictions. Irish President, Michael D. Higgins, described how ‘through [her] deeply insightful work, rich in humanity, Edna O’Brien was one of the first writers to provide a true voice to the experiences of women in Ireland.’
Her latest book, Girl, was inspired by the kidnapping of schoolgirls by Boko Haram, and in her late 80s, the author travelled to Nigeria to research the novel, an experience she recounted to Queen Camilla, then the Duchess of Cornwall, for Her Majesty’s reading room project.
The Queen paid tribute to the author via the Reading Room instagram account: ‘One of the most influential women writers of her generation, Edna’s work explored women’s lives, their often repressive upbringing and their unsuccessful relationships with men.’
Indeed, Edna O’Brien often said that her own complicated childhood inspired much of her critically-lauded prose. Born on a farm in County Clare in 1930, Her father had inherited a thousand acres from his wealthy landowning uncles, but, O’Brien recounted it, gambled it away bit by bit, until the strictly religious family lived in what she called ‘semi-grandeur’.
Rebelling against a ‘suffocating’ Convent education, O’Brien left Ireland and moved to London, swiftly garnering a commission from US publishing giant Alfred A. Knopf for her first novel.
The Country Girls, which O’Brien wrote in three weeks, follows the fortunes of two girls from rural Ireland as they search for life, love, and liberation in London. Pushing back against patriarchal control and conservative religious values, the novel was a Succès de scandale upon first publication.
Archbishop John Charles McQuaid ruled that ‘the book was filth and should not be allowed inside any decent home.’ O’Brien recalled walking through the streets of her hometown and seeing neighbours draw back the curtains – as if she were some kind of ‘Jezebel’.
While the response in Ireland was reactionary, overseas The Country Girls was heralded as the herald of a new literary great. Kingsley Amis called it his ‘personal first-prize novel of the year’ in 1960, and O’Brien found herself catapulted to lady-of-letters status. This success was challenging, however, for her husband. Ernest Gébler, who had achieved minor success as an author in America, grew jealous of his wife’s achievements.
The two had eloped and moved to a house in Putney in 1954, but divorced in 1964 after Gébler took credit for his wife’s early work. In the custody battle that followed, excerpts from her fourth novel, August is a Wicked Month – a tale of one woman’s journey of self-discovery on the French Riviera – were used as evidence of an ‘indecent and obscene’ character. Nevertheless, she won custody.
It was after this separation that O’Brien indulged in the lavish lifestyle that came with the cosmopolitan culturati of sixties London. Parties in her Putney home saw the likes of Princess Margaret and Judy Garland dance the night away in South West London. Paul McCartney serenaded Edna’s children with songs about their mother, and a series of affairs with the biggest names in Hollywood followed fast behind.
But years of burning the candle at both ends, balancing literary revolution with glamorous dissolution, took a psychological toll. Indeed, Edna once had a dream about literally burning her party guests with flaming oil. 'I was mad for life,’ she recounted in a 2012 interview. ‘I thought mistakenly that parties were the ticket to life.'
Turning to the controversial therapist R.D Laing, who guided her through an LSD trip, though the experience was ‘disturbing beyond words’ for the writer. Waiting for her at the end of the bed while she recovered from her hallucinations? Samuel Beckett, which can’t have been immediately reassuring.
A prolific writer, O’Brien produced acclaimed work throughout her life. Biographies of Bryon, plays about Virginia Woolf, and film adaptations starring Elizabeth Taylor. In 1979, she was entrusted with delivering the first ever answer on Question Time, discussing Inter-Irish relations during the Troubles. She was as respected for her political acumen as her prose and parties.
Constantly negotiating her relationship with religion, she told Cole Moreton that she felt ‘ambiguous’ about the afterlife, but she spoke with characteristic candour about her final resting place, near her mother’s family in a graveyard on the islands of County Clare.
‘The walls of the monastery ruins are bleached, with medallions of white lichen. So it’s very stark and beautiful. Water birds and sky birds, wheeling in and out. I think about it as if I am alive after death, seeing it all and writing about it,’ she said. ‘That’s a rather happy thought.’