Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

That Limerick Lady: Exploring the Relationship Between Kate O’Brien and Her City

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Irish Urban Fictions

Part of the book series: Literary Urban Studies ((LIURS))

  • 190 Accesses

Abstract

Born and raised in Limerick and then a boarder at Laurel Hill Convent school in the city, much of Kate O’Brien’s writing reflects upon the city, particularly the development of its social milieu over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as the expansion and commercialisation of the 1960s. Though she travelled and explored settings familiar in a European paradigm of modernism, Limerick remained a central concern and the influence of the city may be read across her life and works. This chapter will explore the ambivalent nature of the relationship between O’Brien and her home city, considering the social changes and tensions of modernity, the creation of the Catholic middle class, and the position of the woman and artist within it. It will also explore how O’Brien’s writings contribute to debates about the spatial and temporal boundaries of modernism, arguing that O’Brien’s emphasis on the regional as well as the transnational draws attention to multiple modernities and provides for expanding our understanding of Irish and women’s modernisms and the complexities of the modern.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    ‘T.P. Pays Tribute to Talented Limerick Lady,’ Excerpt from T.P.’s and Cassell’s Weekly, reprinted in Limerick Leader, August 23, 1926, 4.

  2. 2.

    Kate O’Brien, My Ireland (London: B.T. Batsford, 1962), 148.

  3. 3.

    Nels Pearson, Irish Cosmopolitanism: Location and Dislocation in James Joyce , Elizabeth Bowen and Samuel Beckett (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2015), 83.

  4. 4.

    Sean O’Casey, qtd. in Eibhear Walshe, Kate O’Brien A Writing Life (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006), 40.

  5. 5.

    Kate O’Brien, qtd. in Eibhear Walshe, Kate O’Brien: A Writing Life (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006), 39.

  6. 6.

    Anthony Roche, ‘The Ante-Room as Drama’ in Ordinary People Dancing: Essays on Kate O’Brien , ed. Eibhear Walshe (Cork: Cork University Press, 1993), 89.

  7. 7.

    Toril Moi, ‘First and Foremost a Human Being’: Idealism, Theatre, and Gender in A Doll’s House,’ Modern Drama, 49, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 256.

  8. 8.

    Michael O’Toole, ‘Peasants to Princes,’ Management: Journal of Irish Management Institute, December 1995: n.p.

  9. 9.

    Kate O’Brien, Presentation Parlour (London: Heinemann, 1963), 22.

  10. 10.

    Ibid.

  11. 11.

    Ibid.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., 15–16.

  13. 13.

    Eavan Boland, ‘The Treasury of Kate O’Brien’s Achievement,’ ‘Women’s Press,’ The Irish Press, December 12, 1970, 8.

  14. 14.

    O’Brien, My Ireland, 16. As she states, ‘I feel a desire to assemble in some sort the scattered impressions which Ireland has made on me over the years. No autobiography, need I say?’ (ibid.).

  15. 15.

    Eavan Boland, Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2006), xii.

  16. 16.

    Eavan Boland, ‘Continuing the Encounter’ in Ordinary People Dancing: Essays on Kate O’Brien , ed. Eibhear Walshe (Cork: Cork University Press, 1993), 21.

  17. 17.

    Matthew, L Reznicek, The European Metropolis: Paris and Nineteenth-Century Irish Women Novelists (Clemson University Press, 2017), 5.

  18. 18.

    O’Brien, My Ireland, 178.

  19. 19.

    Kate O’Brien, Without My Cloak (New York: Doubleday, 1931), 3–5.

  20. 20.

    Charles Travis, ‘The ‘Historical Poetics’ of Kate O’Brien’s Limerick: A Critical Literary Geography of Saorstát Éireann and the 1937 Bunreacht na hÉireann Plebiscite,’ Irish Geography, 42, no. 3 (November 2009): 328.

  21. 21.

    O’Brien, Without My Cloak, 10.

  22. 22.

    Ibid.

  23. 23.

    Ibid.

  24. 24.

    Rita Felski, Doing Time: Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture (New York and London: New York University Press, 2000), 25–6.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., 3.

  26. 26.

    Ibid.

  27. 27.

    Kate O’Brien (1941), The Land of Spices (London: Virago, 2002), 157.

  28. 28.

    The O’Mara Papers: Calendar of Kate O’Brien Material. Letter from Kate O’Brien to Anne (Nance) O’Mara, March 11, 1941. 795(5). Special Collections, University of Limerick.

  29. 29.

    Lorna Reynolds, ‘Kate O’Brien and her “Dear Native Place”,’ Ireland of the Welcomes, September–October, 1990: 35.

  30. 30.

    Kate O’Brien (1958), As Music and Splendour (London: Penguin Books, 2006), 8.

  31. 31.

    This reading of As Music and Splendour first appeared in my article ‘Kate O’Brien: Writer Wanderer, Revolutionary’ for the Women’s Museum of Ireland. http://womensmuseumofireland.ie/articles/kate-o-brien.

  32. 32.

    O’Brien, ‘Limerick, as I Remember It,’ 51.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., 4.

  34. 34.

    Reznicek, The European Metropolis, 6.

  35. 35.

    O’Brien, My Ireland, 30.

  36. 36.

    Ibid.

  37. 37.

    Ibid.

  38. 38.

    Kate O’Brien, ‘Long Distances,’ Irish Times, April 7, 1969.

  39. 39.

    Laura Arrington, ‘Irish Modernism,’ in Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Literature. Subject: British, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh Literatures. Online Publication Date: Feb 2017. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.237. Accessed 17 December 2017. 12.

  40. 40.

    Boland, ‘The Treasury of Kate O’Brien’s Achievement,’ 8.

  41. 41.

    ‘Freedom of City for O’Brien,’ Cork Examiner, May 27, 1967, 9.

  42. 42.

    O’Brien, My Ireland, 148.

References

  • Arrington, Laura. ‘Irish Modernism.’ In Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Literature. Subject: British, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh Literatures, 1–19. Online. February 2017. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.237. Accessed December 17, 2017.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Boland, Eavan. ‘The Treasury of Kate O’Brien’s Achievement.’ The Women’s Press. The Irish Press, December 12, 1970, 8.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. ‘Continuing the Encounter.’ In Ordinary People Dancing, ed. Eibhear Walshe, 15–23. Cork: Cork University Press, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time. Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Felski, Rita. Doing Time: Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture. New York; London: New York University Press, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kemmy, Jim. ‘Limerick’s Lost Lady.’ New Hibernia (May 1986): 22.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lloyd, David. Irish Times: Temporalities of Modernity. Notre Dame, IN: Field Day, 2008.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moi, Toril. ‘“First and Foremost a Human Being”: Idealism, Theatre, and Gender in A Doll’s House.’ Modern Drama, 49, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 256–284.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Brien, Kate. Without My Cloak. New York: Doubleday, 1931.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. Mary Lavelle. London: Heinemann. 1936.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. ‘Limerick, as I Remember It.’ Féile Pádraig Annual, 1957, 49–51.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. My Ireland. London: B.T. Batsford, 1962.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. Presentation Parlour. London: Heinemann, 1963.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. ‘Long Distances.’ Irish Times, April 7, 1969.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. The Ante-Room. London: Virago, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. The Land of Spices. London: Virago, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. As Music and Splendour. London: Penguin Books, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Toole, Michael. ‘Peasants to Princes.’ Management: Journal of Irish Management Institute (December 1995): n.p.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pearson, Nels. Irish Cosmopolitanism: Location and Dislocation in James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, and Samuel Beckett. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2015.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Reynolds, Lorna. ‘Kate O’Brien and Her ‘Dear Native Place”.’ Ireland of the Welcomes, September–October 1990, 33–35.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reznicek, Matthew L. The European Metropolis: Paris and Nineteenth Century Irish Women Novelists. Clemson: Clemson University Press, 2017.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roche, Anthony. ‘The Ante-Room as Drama.’ In Ordinary People Dancing: Essays on Kate O’Brien, ed. Eibhear Walshe, 85–199. Cork: Cork University Press, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  • Travis, Charles. ‘The “Historical Poetics” of Kate O’Brien’s Limerick: A Critical Literary Geography of Saorstát Éireann and the 1937 Bunreacht na hÉireann Plebiscite.’ Irish Geography 42, no. 3 (November 2009): 323–341.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walshe, Eibhear. Kate O’Brien A Writing Life. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Margaret O’Neill

Authors
  1. Margaret O’Neill
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Margaret O’Neill .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Studies in Otherness, Aarhus University, Denmark

    Maria Beville

  2. University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Deirdre Flynn

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

O’Neill, M. (2018). That Limerick Lady: Exploring the Relationship Between Kate O’Brien and Her City. In: Beville, M., Flynn, D. (eds) Irish Urban Fictions. Literary Urban Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98322-6_3

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation