Pat O'Shea (22 January 1931 – 3 May 2007) was an Irish children's fiction writer. She was born in

Galway Galway ( ; ga, Gaillimh, ) is a city in the West of Ireland, in the province of Connacht, which is the county town of County Galway. It lies on the River Corrib between Lough Corrib and Galway Bay, and is the sixth most populous city on ...

and was the youngest of five children. Her first novel was the best-selling '' The Hounds of the Morrigan'', which took 13 years to complete. It was finally published in 1985 by

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, translated into five languages, and is still considered a classic of children's literature.

Biography

O'Shea (née Patricia Mary Shiels) was born in the

Bohermore Bohermore () is an area of Galway, Ireland. It got this name as it was the main road into Galway City from the east in medieval times. There is a large cemetery located in Bohermore known as the "New Cemetery", which contains two mortuary chape ...

area of Galway and attended Presentation National School and the Convent of Mercy Secondary School. She was the youngest of five children. Her mother died when O'Shea was a small child, and she and the other children were brought up by her older sister. At 16 she followed her siblings to

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and decided to stay there, getting a job in a bookshop in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

. She began to write theatre plays and received a bursary in 1967 from the British Art Council.Daniel Ficking,
Obituary - Pat O'Shea, Author of the best-selling The Hounds of the Morrigan
" The Guardian, Saturday, 23 June 2007 Her writing for the theatre was supported by

David Scase David Scase (21 September 1919 – 27 February 2003) was a British theatre director and actor. Born at Fulham, London, as the son of a bricklayer, his first job was in a bicycle factory in the mid-1930s. He joined the Merchant Navy on the outbr ...

, director of the

Library Theatre Manchester Central Library is the headquarters of the city's library and information service in Manchester, England. Facing St Peter's Square, it was designed by E. Vincent Harris and constructed between 1930 and 1934. The form of the buildin ...

, Manchester, and his successor Tony Colegate, and four of her one-act plays were produced by the Library Theatre. Her play ''The King's Ears'' was commissioned by BBC Northern Ireland. In 1971 she worked on a sketch comedy show for Granada Television called ''Flat Earth'', but this was not successful. In 1969 she had begun to write short stories and poetry, as well as a comic novel (unpublished). By the early 1970s she began writing ''The Hounds of the Morrigan'' to please herself and family and friends, with little expectation of getting it published. It took O'Shea ten years to complete her novel. By 1985, it had already been translated into several languages. In poor health by the time of that novel's first sudden success, she completed only a few chapters of the unpublished sequel in the subsequent decades, although her obituary in

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

calls these "brilliant". In 1988 O'Shea published a second children's book, ''Finn Mac Cool and the Small Men of Deeds'', through the publisher Holiday. It was a retelling of folklore tales, illustrated by Stephen Lavis. In 1987

Horn Book Magazine ''The Horn Book Magazine'', founded in Boston in 1924, is the oldest bimonthly magazine dedicated to reviewing children's literature. It began as a "suggestive purchase list" prepared by Bertha Mahony Miller and Elinor Whitney Field, proprietres ...

included it in their annual list of notable children's books, giving it a Horn Book Fanfare Best books of the year award. In 1999 she published her third (and final) book, ''The Magic Bottle'' ( Scholastic). It was also illustrated by Lavis. She married JJ (Jack) O'Shea in 1953, but they separated in 1962. They had one son, Jim. Pat O'Shea died in

in 2007, at age 76.

Published books

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Oshea, Pat 1931 births 2007 deaths Irish children's writers Irish women writers