TRIBUTES HAVE CONTINUED for the acclaimed Irish writer Edna O’Brien following her death at the age of 93.

Her publisher Faber confirmed that the author “died peacefully” on Saturday following a long illness.  

O’Brien – a novelist, short story writer, memoirist, poet and playwright – is best known for her portrayal of women’s lives against repressive expectations in Irish society.

Her debut novel and most famous work, The Country Girls, was deemed “indecent” and “obscene” and banned by the Irish censorship board when it was published in 1960. Some copies of the book were also publicly burned. 

President Michael D Higgins led tributes to his “dear friend” yesterday, calling O’Brien “one of the outstanding writers of modern times”. 

“Edna was a fearless teller of truths, a superb writer possessed of the moral courage to confront Irish society with realities long ignored and suppressed,” the President said.

The news of her death was covered internationally over the weekend.

An obituary published in The New York Times described O’Brien as a “firebrand” whose work delivered “searing, candid portraits of Irish society through the prism of female friendship”. 

It said that following the publication of The Country Girls, O’Brien became “Ireland’s most notorious exiled daughter, and its foremost chronicler of female experience”.

A BBC obituary declared O’Brien “the woman who scandalised Catholic Ireland” and said she will be remembered “as a woman who changed the nature of Irish fiction”. 

‘Broke glass’

Le Monde wrote that women’s lives in a conservative society were at the heart of O’Brien’s work “in a style that was both raw and lyrical”.

Irish author Colm Tóibín said O’Brien was a “brave writer” who “broke glass in Ireland”.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “She wrote about sexuality, about women, about young women’s lives.

“In a way she was punished for that, the censorship laws were there, but it wasn’t just the Irish censorship laws, it was the entire way society dealt with her.”

Tóibín, who wrote novels including Brooklyn, The Magician and House Of Names, said that when he was growing up, one of O’Brien’s books was “hidden over the wardrobe”.

The name Edna O’Brien suggested not only, I suppose, the breaking of glass, as I said, but a sort of glamour – moving to London and living a different sort of life.

“The life she lived in London was a sort of lifetime effort to get over that initial idea that she was a filthy writer, that she was a scandalous woman – a title of one of her other books – that she was a very serious literary artist.”

Dr Maureen O’Connor, senior lecturer in English at University College Cork, described O’Brien as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

“She kept writing well into the 21st century… continuing to produce works of art that are going to last forever,” she told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland programme.

Speaking about the censorship of her work in Ireland, O’Connor said that O’Brien was amused by it and expected it at first.

“I think she saw it at first as something that could potentially raise her profile, make her a bit of a scandal. But I also would say as the years went on that it hurt her,” she said, adding that the author was not given major reviews in the Irish press.

“While at first, it seemed part of the fun and the sensation that she was creating, the fact that it persisted and seemed to really affect her reputation in the country she loved so much for decades after was, I think, a real disappointment and a source of hurt for her.”

Maura McGrath, chair of the Arts Council, said O’Brien was “a singular voice in the landscape of Irish literature”.

“With Country Girls, she was fearless and unwavering in her storytelling of Irish women during an oppressive time in our history,” she said.

“Her writing gave identity to a generation of women with complex and contradictory relationships with their own rural communities across the country.”

Arts Council director Maureen Kennelly said: “Despite protest and outrage, Edna’s writing revolutionised Irish literature and is now recognised as an intricate part of our culture.

“Eloquence, intelligence, defiance and resilience could be seen as Edna’s defining qualities. However, her generosity, her wit and her mischievous nature wove together a fascinating, outspoken and gifted writer.”

Edna O’Brien is survived by her two sons, Carlo and Sasha Gébler.

With reporting from Press Association