O'Brien, (Josephine) Edna (1932– )

Irish writer. Her first novel, The Country Girls (1960), together with The Lonely Girl (later called The Girl With Green Eyes) (1962) and Girls in their Married Bliss (1964), formed a trilogy about two girls who flee restrictive rural Ireland for excitement in Dublin and London, ending in bleak disillusionment. Loneliness, guilt, and loss tend to dominate her work, though she has a lyrical prose style and there are moments of joyful self-fulfilment.

Her lack of inhibition has led to comparison with the French writer Colette, and much of her work was banned by the Irish censors. Her other novels include August is a Wicked Month (1965), Casualties of Peace (1966), A Pagan Place (1970, dramatized 1972), Night (1972), Johnny I Hardly Knew You (1977), Time and Tide (1992), and House of Splendid Isolation (1994). She published four volumes of short stories (1968–86), plays (including A Scandalous Woman (1974) and Virginia (1981) about Virginia Woolf), and Mother Ireland (1976), a nostalgic tribute.

O'Brien was born in Tuamgraney, County Clare, and educated at various convents and at the Pharmaceutical College of Dublin. She briefly practised pharmacy before turning to writing. She later moved to England.