Famous Irish Authors: 12 Great Writers From Ireland

Ireland is a country of writers. The Emerald Isle may be small, with a small population, yet it has produced an astounding number of world-famous authors. The majority of well-known Irish writers are responsible for some of the most important works in English literature.

Famous Irish Authors: 12 Great Writers From Ireland

The following is a list of some of Ireland’s most famous authors from the last four centuries.

1. Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745)

Birth Place: Dublin, Ireland

Notable Works: Gulliver’s Travels

Jonathan Swift was a satirical writer, poet, and, strangely enough, cleric who served as Dean of Dublin’s Saint Patrick’s Cathedral during his lifetime.

He was a prolific writer who completed several novels, essays, poems, and political papers. He was born in Dublin to a family with multiple literary connections.

His journey, like Oscar Wilde’s, ends in misery, as he lost his ability to talk and became mentally disturbed following a probable stroke at the age of 75.

Following his death, the vast fortune he left behind was used to establish a psychiatric institution.

2. W.B. Yeats (1865 – 1939)

Birth Place: Sandymount, Ireland

Notable Works: (poems) an ode to his favorite place in Sligo called ‘Lake Isle of Innisfree’ and the romantic ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’.

William Butler Yeats was a gifted poet and one of the most famous figures in the late-nineteenth-century Irish literary resurgence. He was also one of the founders of the Abbey, Ireland’s most prominent theatre, and the first Irishman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

He became a Senator in the independent Irish government after becoming a regular commentator on Irish politics.

Most of his poetry was inspired by his public service job, his childhood travels to County Sligo, and his failed love life. He proposed to Maud Gonne, the love of his life, four times over several years, but she declined each time.

READ MORE: 12 Interesting Facts About William Butler Yeats

3. Molly Keane (1904 – 1996) pen name M.J. Farrell

Birth Place: Newbridge, County Kildare, Ireland

Notable Works: Good Behaviour, The Rising Tide, Time After Time

Keane was a Jane Austen fan, and her talent, like Austen’s, resided in her ability to create characters.

This, combined with her wit and a keen awareness of what was going on beyond the surface of people’s behavior, allowed her to portray the world of Ireland’s huge mansions in the 1920s and 1930s.

Keane said she “caught her class in all its nasty snobbery and polite bigotry”.

For her subsequent works, she used her married name, and several of them (such as Good Behaviour and Time After Time) have been adapted for television.

4. Oscar Wilde (1845 – 1900)

Birth Place: Dublin, Ireland

Notable Works: The Importance of Being Ernest, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854, and his legacy is still felt throughout the city.

The house where he was born is now the academic center of Trinity College Dublin, where he studied. In Dublin, there are also various museums dedicated to Oscar Wilde.

While Wilde is most known for his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, he is also a fantastic playwright. The Importance of Being Earnest is one of his most well-known plays. Later, he moved to London, where his plays were well-received.

Because of the harsh rules of the time, Oscar Wilde was imprisoned and exiled. He was accused of being in a same-sex relationship, which was illegal at the time.

READ MORE: Interesting Facts About Oscar Wilde

5. Samuel Beckett (1906 – 1989)

Birth Place: Dublin, Ireland

Notable Works: (play) Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett appears frequently in lists of “most significant Irish writers”. He wrote a lot of plays since he was so active in theatre and theater, but he also wrote a lot of poems and a few novels.

He lived in Paris for the majority of his adult life and wrote in both English and French, even joining the French resistance in 1940 and obtaining two medals for his contributions.

His art is classified as modernist and is generally based on many aspects of human nature, with grim, black humor undertones.

6. Bram Stoker (1847 – 1912)

Birth Place: Dublin, Ireland

Notable Works: Dracula

Bram Stoker was born in Clontarf, Dublin, and educated at Trinity College.

He worked as a theatre critic before committing his life to assist actor Sir Henry Irving, with whom he traveled the world. He also served as the business manager for Irving’s Lyceum Theatre.

In his spare time, Bram Stoker penned novels and short stories. His original manuscript for Dracula went misplaced during his travels with Irving, only to be discovered in a Pennsylvania barn in the 1980s!

7. Edna O’Brien OBE (1932 – present)

Birth Place: Tuamgraney, County Clare, Ireland

Notable Works: The Girl with Green Eyes, August is a Wicked Month, Casualties of Peace

Josephine Edna O’Brien DBE is an Irish novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet, and short-story writer who was born on December 15, 1930.

Former Irish President Mary Robinson called her “one of the great creative writers of her generation,” while American novelist Philip Roth called her “the most gifted lady now writing in English.”

She writes in a variety of literary genres.

8. George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950)

Birth Place: Dublin, Ireland

Notable Works: Pygmalion, Candida, Man  and Superman

George Bernard Shaw, the Nobel Laureate for Literature, was most known for his realism and support for women’s rights and socialism.

Shaw was one of London’s most powerful figures in the early twentieth century. He was a writer, political activist, and journalist. The word “Shavian” was used to describe his ideals.

He wrote the drama, Pygmalion, which inspired the musical My Fair Lady. Candida and Man and Superman are among his other significant works.

9. James Joyce (1882 – 1941)

Birth Place: Dublin, Ireland

Notable Works: Dubliners, Ulysses

When people think of Irish literature, James Joyce is frequently the first name that comes to mind.

Thanks to his distinct modernist style, which revolutionized fiction writing in the early twentieth century, he is unquestionably the most important Irish writer, as well as one of the most important writers in the world. 

Joyce was born in 1882 in Rathgar, Dublin, and spent his childhood in various parts of the city. He spent his later years in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris, dying in Zurich at the age of 58 from complications related to a ruptured ulcer.

Every year on June 16th, the author and his most renowned work are remembered all around the world with a series of literary activities dubbed “Bloomsday”.

READ MORE:  Interesting Facts About James Joyce

10. Seamus Heaney (1939 – 2013)

Birth Place: Tamniaran, near Castledawson, Northern Ireland

Notable Works: Death of a Naturalist, North, Human Chain, Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (translation, 1999)

Seamus Justin Heaney, MRIA, was a poet, playwright, and translator, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. Heaney was and continues to be regarded as one of Ireland’s most important poets during his lifetime.

Robert Lowell, an American poet, called him “the most important Irish poet after Yeats,” and many others, like professor John Sutherland, called him “the finest poet of our time”.  “With his extraordinary sense of eye and ear, Heaney possesses the gift of the storyteller,” says Robert Pinsky.

When he died in 2013, The Independent called him “perhaps the world’s best-known poet”.

11. C.S. Lewis (1898 – 1963)

Birth Place: Belfast, Northern Ireland

Notable Works: The Chronicles of Narnia (a series of 7 books), The Screwtape Letters, The Four Loves

Clive Staples Lewis is frequently wrongly recognized as a British novelist.

However, he was born and raised in Belfast before going to England at the age of eleven to attend boarding school. He grew up surrounded by books and was a very imaginative boy, so it’s no surprise that he went on to write one of the best children’s books ever written.

When his childhood pet dog, Jacksie, died, he refused to go by any other name but Jack, a nickname he’d had since he was a boy.

He maintained a strong sense of his Irish identity throughout his life, frequently searching out Irish locals when he lived in Britain. He even spent his honeymoon in Crawfordsburn, Northern Ireland.

READ MORE:  Interesting Facts About C.S. Lewis

12. Maeve Binchy (1940 – 2012)

Birth Place: Dublin, Ireland

Notable Works: Circle of Friends, Deeply Regretted By…,  Scarlet Feather and Tara Road

Maeve Binchy is one of the most well-known modern Irish writers, both in Ireland and around the world. She died only a few years ago, but she had long been considered a national treasure.

Her many works are mostly set in rural or small-town Ireland, with vivid characters and typically a surprising plot twist in the end.

Binchy’s writing career began by chance while she was staying on a kibbutz in Israel when she wrote home to her parents, who forwarded her letters to the Irish Independent. Her 16 novels, four short story collections, and other works have been translated into 37 languages.

Read More: Interesting Facts About Maeve Binchy