32 Facts About Maeve Brennan

Maeve Brennan was an Irish short story writer and journalist.

Maeve Brennan moved to the United States in 1934 when her father was assigned by the Department of Foreign Affairs to the Irish Legation in Washington, DC.

Maeve Brennan was an important figure in both Irish diaspora writing and in Irish literature itself.

Maeve Brennan was born in Dublin, one of four siblings, and grew up at 48 Cherryfield Avenue in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh.

Maeve Brennan's continuing political activity resulted in further imprisonments in 1917 and 1920.

Maeve Brennan was director of publicity for the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army during the Irish Civil War.

Maeve Brennan founded and was the director of The Irish Press newspaper.

Maeve Brennan attended the Sisters of Providence Catholic school in Washington, Immaculata Seminary, graduating in 1936.

Maeve Brennan then graduated with a degree in English from American University in 1938.

Maeve Brennan moved to New York and found work as a fashion copywriter at Harper's Bazaar in the 1940s.

Maeve Brennan wrote a Manhattan column for the Dublin society magazine Social and Personal, and wrote several short pieces for The New Yorker magazine.

Maeve Brennan first wrote for The New Yorker as a social diarist.

Maeve Brennan wrote sketches about New York life in The Talk of the Town section under the pseudonym "The Long-Winded Lady".

Maeve Brennan wrote about both Ireland and the United States.

Maeve Brennan's work was fostered by William Maxwell, and she wrote under The New Yorker managing editors Harold Ross and William Shawn.

In 1954, Maeve Brennan married St Clair McKelway, The New Yorkers managing editor.

Edward Albee greatly admired Maeve Brennan and compared her to Chekhov and Flaubert.

Maeve Brennan dedicated the published editions of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung and Box to her.

Maeve Brennan was writing consistently and productively in the late 1960s.

Maeve Brennan's friends began to find her eccentricities disturbing rather than entertaining.

Maeve Brennan was last seen at the magazine's offices in 1981.

Maeve Brennan died of a heart attack on November 1,1993, aged 76, and is buried in Queens, New York City.

Maeve Brennan's writing style in her "Long-Winded Lady" pieces and in her short stories are quite different both in style and content.

Maeve Brennan then embellishes her observations with speculations and autobiographical details.

Maeve Brennan is always an onlooker in these sketches, never a participant.

Maeve Brennan wrote a novella, The Visitor, in the 1940s, but it was not published until 2000, after the only known copy of the manuscript was discovered in the archives of the University of Notre Dame.

Maeve Brennan's grandmother is angry with Anastasia for choosing to live with her mother rather than her father.

In 1987, Mary Hawthorne, who was then on the staff of The New Yorker, grew interested in Maeve Brennan after seeing an older woman, dishevelled and dressed eccentrically, staring at the floor in the vestibule of the offices one day.

Maeve Brennan learned that the woman was Maeve Brennan, no longer allowed inside, and from Hilton Als that Brennan had been a cult figure to many younger writers on the staff.

Maeve Brennan began asking around about her, interviewing colleagues, among them William Maxwell, Alastair Reid, Brendan Gill, and Gardner Botsford; family members; and Karl Bissinger, who had photographed her in her glamorous youth.

Maeve Brennan was mentioned in Roddy Doyle's book Rory and Ita as a cousin of his mother who stayed with his family and wrote book reviews for The New Yorker in the garden.

Many of Maeve Brennan's stories were set in her childhood home at 48 Cherryfield Avenue, Ranelagh, Dublin.