Maeve Binchy
Maeve Binchy was an acclaimed Irish author born on May 28, 1940, in Dalkey, Ireland. She graduated from University College Dublin in 1960 and initially worked as a teacher before transitioning to writing. Binchy began her literary career with short stories and plays, with notable productions like *End of Term* at Dublin's Abbey Theatre. Her first novel, *Light a Penny Candle*, published in 1982, marked the beginning of a prolific writing career that resulted in sixteen novels, including popular titles such as *Circle of Friends* and *Tara Road*, both of which have been adapted into films.
Binchy's works often explore themes of personal empowerment and human relationships, resonating with a broad audience and earning recognition beyond Ireland. She received several prestigious awards throughout her career, including the W. H. Smith Fiction Award and a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Book Awards. Binchy passed away on July 30, 2012, but her literary legacy continued with the posthumous publication of *A Week in Winter* and a collection of her unpublished short stories, *Chestnut Street*, released in 2014. Her storytelling style and engaging narratives have made her a beloved figure in contemporary literature.
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Subject Terms
Maeve Binchy
Author
- Born: May 28, 1940
- Birthplace: Dalkey, Ireland
- Died: July 30, 2012
Biography
Maeve Binchy was born on May 28, 1940 in Dalkey, Ireland. The daughter of a lawyer, William T. Binchy, and a nurse, Maureen Blackmore Binchy, she received her BA in 1960 from University College in Dublin. After graduation, she spent about eight years teaching French, Latin, and history at two schools in Dublin. She married writer and broadcaster Gordon Thomas Snell on January 29, 1977, and the couple settled near Dublin, where Binchy said she and her husband worked in “a lovely room with a long, long desk and two word processors.”
Although Binchy was best known for her novels, she began her career writing short stories and plays. Dublin’s Abbey Theatre produced Binchy’s End of Term in 1976, and her play, The Half Promised Land, was staged in Dublin and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Some of her books, including Echoes (1986), and Circle of Friends (1990), were made into films: Echoes was adapted as a miniseries, televised in the United Kingdom in 1988 and in the United States on Public Broadcasting Service in 1990. Binchy published several short story collections, but none of them were as successful as her novels.
Binchy’s first novel, Light a Penny Candle, was published in London in 1982, and by Viking Press in the United States the following year. The book describes the twenty-year relationship between two girls who meet when they are children during World War II and follows them through their adult lives and subsequent divorces. Binchy told a People magazine reporter that the message of her novels and short stories is that people need to take charge of their lives; once they do, she said, they can make things work out for the best.
Over the ensuing years, despite claims at one point in 2000 that she was retiring from writing, Binchy went on to write and publish a total of sixteen novels. Her 1990 tale Circle of Friends was adapted into a feature film in 1995, which starred Chris O'Donnell and Minnie Driver. Three years later, one of her other most popular and beloved novels, Tara Road, hit store shelves. The book tells the story of an Irish woman and a woman from New England who exchange homes in an attempt to escape from their troubled lives; endorsed by Oprah Winfrey's book club, the novel was also made into a film that was released in 2005. A hospitalization for a heart condition in 2002 inspired her to eventually write Heart and Soul (2008), among other novels.
Asked by Writer interviewer Lewis Burke Frumkes to explain why her writing has such wide appeal, having been translated into numerous languages and outselling writers such as James Joyce and William Butler Yeats, Binchy said her work is aimed at the masses. According to her, “The thing is, if you were going on a journey and you were thinking,’I must read something on the plane,’ and if you had read any of my books before you would think, ’well, she tells a good story.’”
In 1979, Binchy received the International Television Festival Golden Prague Award and the Czechoslovak Television, Prague, and Jacobs Award for her television screenplay, Deeply Regretted By. She also received the W. H. Smith Fiction Award in 2001 for her novel Scarlet Feather. In 2010, she was honored with a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Book Awards.
Following a brief illness, it was announced that Binchy had passed away in Dublin on July 30, 2012, at the age of seventy-two. She was survived by her husband, a sister, and a brother. Later that year, her final novel, A Week in Winter, was published posthumously. In 2014, Binchy's editors gathered together thirty-six of her unpublished short stories about various characters who lived on the same fictional street in Ireland in a collection tited Chestnut Street.
Bibliography
Binchy, Maeve. Maeve's Times: In Her Own Words. Ed. Róisín Ingle. Knopf, 2014. Print.
Dudgeon, Piers. Maeve Binchy: The Biography. Dunne, 2014. Print.
Fox, Margalit. "Maeve Binchy, Writer Who Evoked Ireland, Dies at 72." New York Times. New York Times, 31 July 2012. Web. 8 Mar. 2016.
O'Clery, Conor. "Maeve Binchy Obituary." Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 31 July 2012. Web. 8 Mar. 2016.
Schudel, Matt. "Maeve Binchy, Popular Irish Novelist, Dies at 72." Washington Post. Washington Post, 31 July 2012. Web. 8 Mar. 2016.