Edna O'Brien - Collected Works (40 books)

* Edna O'Brien - Collected Works (40 books)

EDNA O’BRIEN (1930–2024) was an Irish novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and short-story writer. She was one of Ireland’s most pioneering and celebrated literary voices, renowned for breaking social taboos and capturing the complexities of female desire, identity, and repression, subjects that were considered strictly forbidden in her homeland at the time. Her lyrical yet unflinching prose frequently drew the ire of both the Catholic Church and the Irish state, which banned several of her early books. Despite severe censorship and public condemnation, she persisted in charting the emotional and sexual lives of women, eventually earning her place as a towering figure in contemporary world literature.

O'Brien burst onto the international literary scene with her groundbreaking debut novel, THE COUNTRY GIRLS (1960), detailing the sexual and social awakenings of two young Irish women. The book was the first in a trilogy – followed by THE LONELY GIRL (1962) and GIRLS IN THEIR MARRIED BLISS (1964), later collected as THE COUNTRY GIRLS TRILOGY (1987) – tracing the two characters as they grow up, rebel and run away to Dublin and London. Shortly after their publication, the novels were placed on the censorship index and banned in her native country for their frank portrayals of the sex lives of their characters.

She continued to publish highly acclaimed novels that examined dark or controversial themes, including AUGUST IS A WICKED MONTH (1965), in which an unhappily married woman has a sensual awakening on the French Riviera, A PAGAN PLACE (1970), TIME AND TIDE (1992), and IN THE FOREST (2002), a fictional account of a notorious Irish murder that was denounced by the Irish Times as "morally criminal". In her later years, her fiction took on a more global and political scope, evident in works like THE LITTLE RED CHAIRS (2015), which dealt with Balkan war crimes, and GIRL (2019), a harrowing novel inspired by the 2014 Boko Haram kidnappings of 276 schoolgirls in Nigeria.

In addition to her novels, O’Brien was a master of the short story, a form she used to deliver sharp, poignant vignettes of loneliness and passion. Her principal short fiction collections include THE LOVE OBJECT (1968), A SCANDALOUS WOMAN AND OTHER STORIES (1974), LANTERN SLIDES (1990), and SAINTS AND SINNERS (2011). These collections solidified her reputation as a writer capable of distilling profound psychological truths into brief, lyrical narratives. She also wrote extensively for the stage, creating evocative plays such as A PAGAN PLACE (1972) and THE COUNTRY GIRLS (2011)—both adapted from her own novels—VIRGINIA (1981), which explored the life of Virginia Woolf, HAUNTED (2010), and JOYCE'S WOMEN (2022).

O’Brien’s versatile bibliography also encompasses significant works of non-fiction, biographical studies, and children's literature. She penned insightful biographies of other literary giants, namely JAMES JOYCE (1999) and BYRON IN LOVE (2009), drawing parallels between her own experiences of exile and theirs. Her deeply personal reflections and memories culminated in her widely praised memoir, COUNTRY GIRL (2012), which chronicled her journey from rural Ireland to the center of London’s cultural elite. Finally, she contributed to children’s literature with enchanting titles such as THE RESCUE (1983) and TALES FOR THE TELLING (1986), a collection of Irish folk and fairy stories, proving her ability to connect with readers across generations and formats.

Following her death in 2024, Irish president Michael D. Higgins, himself a writer and poet, wrote: "Through that 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 in their different generations and played an important role in transforming the status of women across Irish society".


In compiling this torrent, I have built upon @pharmakate's outstanding 2014 collection of original scans. The following books are in ePUB and/or PDF format as indicated:

== NOVELS ==

* August is a Wicked Month (Open Road, 2012) – ePUB
* Casualties of Peace (Penguin, 1982) – PDF^
* Country Girls, The: Three Novels and an Epilogue (FSG, 2017 / Plume, 1987) – ePUB / PDF^
* Down by the River (Picador, 2022 / FSG, 1997) – ePUB / PDF^
* Girl (Picador, 2020) – ePUB
* High Road, The (Picador, 2022 / FSG, 1988) – ePUB / PDF^
* House of Splendid Isolation (Picador, 2022 / Plume, 1995) – ePUB / PDF^
* In the Forest (Picador, 2020 / Phoenix, 2002) – ePUB / PDF^
* Johnny I Hardly Knew You (Penguin, 1978) – PDF^
* Light of Evening, The (Picador, 2020 / Houghton Mifflin, 2006) – ePUB / PDF^
* Little Red Chairs, The (Little Brown, 2016) – ePUB
* Night (Faber & Faber, 2014 / FSG, 1987) – ePUB / PDF^
* A Pagan Place (Picador, 2019/ Knopf, 1970) – ePUB / PDF^
* Time and Tide (Picador, 2019 / FSG, 1992) – ePUB / PDF^
* Wild Decembers (Picador, 2020) – ePUB
* X Y & Zee (Lancer, 1971) – PDF^

== SHORT STORIES ==

* A Fanatic Heart: Selected Stories (FSG, 2008 / Plume, 1985) – ePUB / PDF^
* Lantern Slides (Picador, 2019 / FSG, 1990) – ePUB / PDF^
* Love Object, The: Selected Stories (Little Brown, 2015) – ePUB
* Mrs. Reinhardt and Other Stories (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1978) – PDF
* Paradise (Faber & Faber, 2019) – ePUB
* Returning: Tales (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982) – PDF
* A Rose in the Heart (Doubleday, 1979) – PDF^
* Saints and Sinners: Stories (Back Bay Books, 2011) – ePUB / PDF^
* A Scandalous Woman and Other Stories (HBJ, 1974) – PDF^

== PLAYS ==

* Country Girls, The: Adapted for the Stage (Faber & Faber, 2011) – ePUB
* Haunted (Faber & Faber, 2010) – PDF
* Joyce's Women (Faber & Faber, 2022) – ePUB
* A Pagan Place: A Play (Faber & Faber, 1973) – PDF
* Triptych and Iphigenia: Two Plays (Grove, 2003) – ePUB
* Virginia: A Play (HBJ, 1985) – PDF^

== NON-FICTION ==

* Byron in Love: A Short Daring Life (Norton, 2009) – ePUB
* Country Girl: A Memoir (Little Brown, 2013) – ePUB
* James and Nora: A Portrait of a Marriage (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2020) – PDF
* James Joyce (Viking, 1999) – PDF^
* Mother Ireland (HBJ, 1976) – PDF^
* Vanishing Ireland [with Richard Fitzgerald, text only] (Jonathan Cape, 1986) – PDF

== CHILDREN'S BOOKS ==

* Rescue, The (Hodder and Stoughton, 1983) – PDF
* Tales for the Telling: Irish Folk and Fairy Stories (Bedford Square, 2013) – ePUB

== EDITOR ==

* Some Irish Loving: A Selection (Penguin, 1981) – PDF^

== OTHER ==

* Conversations with Edna O'Brien [ed. Kersnowski] (Mississippi, 2014) – ePUB / PDF

PDF^ courtesy of @pharmakate


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