Maeve Brennan

by Angela Bourke

"Witty, small, and beautiful, Maeve Brennan dazzled everyone who met her; "To be around her," said a colleague, "was to see style being invented." She was born in Dublin in 1917, and came to Washington in 1934 with her father, the Irish ambassador to the United States. Later, as a staff writer at Harper's Bazaar, she reveled in Manhattan's world of theater and fashion, until, in 1948, The New Yorker lured her away. Under the pseudonym "The Long-Winded Lady," she wrote matchless urban postcards for "Talk of the Town," and under her own name published fierce, intimate fiction - tales of childhood, marriage, exile, longing, and the unforgiving side of the Irish temper." Today her forty-odd stories, collected and republished posthumously, are prized by writers as different from one another as Penelope Fitzgerald, Mavis Gallant, and Alice Munro. William Maxwell called her masterpiece, "The Springs of Affection," one of the great short stories of the twentieth century. But at the time of her death in 1993, Maeve Brennan was lost to the world: she hadn't published a word since the 1970s and had slowly slipped into madness, ending up homeless on the streets of midtown Manhattan.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Ireland, Biography Memoir, Memoir, New York, Irish Literature

333 pages, Hardcover

First published May 13, 2004

About the author

A Dublin native educated at University College, Dublin and Univ. de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest (France), Bourke has taught at Harvard, University of Minnesota, University College, Dublin . Her Salt Water won the Frank O’Connor Award for Short Fiction in 1992, and The Burning of Bridget Cleary won The Irish Times Non-Fiction Award in 1999 and the American Conference of Irish Studies (ACIS) James S. Donnelly Prize in 2001.

Reviews

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered Maeve Brennan's work only this year, and quite by accident, just randomly perusing the shelves of the Strand. "That's a very Irish name," I thought when I saw it on the spine of Springs of Affection and so I bought it. Those stories were indeed remarkable (see my comments elsewhere), and from thence, every visit to the shop had me stopping in the "B"s to see if there was more. I later found The Rose Garden and most recently The Visitor, Brennan's long-lost novella written in her late twenties. A Wiki search brought me the basics of her history, and Angela Bourke's loving biography helped to flesh out some of the mysteries of this truly compelling writer's story.

I always cry at the end of a biography, because the subject dies, and I've invested an entire book's worth of time in getting to know and appreciate them. Ms. Brennan's life turned tragic well before her death, alas, and as one of the other reader/reviewers below mentioned, I wish there were more known about that period of her life. But as she distanced herself from friends and relations and ultimately reality, she fell off the radar: into obscurity, penury and madness.

Brennan's talent was like a meteor: it burnt bright and hot, but briefly. A streak across the literary firmament of mid-century New York (which was well stocked with dazzling stars and suns of all class), she was hardly known in her native Ireland. I'm more than glad Ms. Bourke has been able to contribute to her resurrection.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this long ago so cannot provide a full review. But it is a story that really moved me about a writer who was successful but towards the end of her life had no family, and no safety net. She ended her life ill and without a home, but was taken in by former colleagues at the New Yorker where she worked for years as a writer. They allowed her to live there surreptitiously. At the 2012 Dublin Theater Festival I saw a play "Talk of the Town" written about Emma O'Donoghue. It was a huge hit and I was fortunate enough to have purchased tickets in advance as it was sold out.

May, 2025
I read this for the second time for my Irish nonfiction book group. I skimmed the first three chapters about her early life which included too many details about early years of the Irish struggle and her father's involvement. But it is likely that these years were traumatic for young Maeve, when British soldiers frequently raided her home looking for guns and her father. Her father was eventually jailed for a time.
The high points of this book are the descriptions of life at The New Yorker during the 1960's and 70's. There were many writers whose names were very familiar. Many of them came from privileged backgrounds, which Maeve did not. She emulated their lifestyles which she could not afford. Despite her precarious financial situation, she produced two columns for The New Yorker, and numerous short stories. The book provides detailed examples of her writing, and in-depth descriptions.

Brennan's story provides insight into the limitations on women in Ireland of the time. She stayed in America after her father's service in charge of the Irish Legation in Washington. Although she lived a freer life than she would have in Ireland, she also found that women's roles and lives were also limited in America. She had many saviors along the way, and again and again, they rescued her.
It is also a compelling insight into the lives of writers not only at The New Yorker, but in general. Brennan's columns about New York provide portrays of neighborhoods, streets and buildings that have all but disappeared.

Brennan was never well known in Ireland. When her books were published in the 70's in America there was no existing market for books published in the US in Ireland. Her American books are out of print until the late 1990's when they were republished in the US, and again reissued from 2009 to around 2015. Her legacy was almost lost, and she is still neglected. But her brilliant writing deserves attention.

[Jamie · Rating 2 out of 5]

While Maeve Brennan seems to have been an incredibly interesting person, this biography is incredibly dull. It took me 6 months to make it through the dense catalogue of every address where she or anyone she ever knew lived, every flower that her mother grew in every house, every minute detail of her life. It was almost like the writer was trying to prove how much she knew about Brennan. The footnotes alone are something like 100 pages. It's interesting in parts, but it's just so dense that I made very little progress. The first third of the book is not even about Maeve, but about her entire family and history - which I know is important to her historical context and the writer she became. There was just way too much of everything, even the things that were good. It did get better toward the end, once Maeve and her writing were the focus, and I'm glad I finally did finish it. But it was slow going.

This book was received from the publishers through the Goodreads First Reads program. Thank you!

[Ms. Chedwick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I had learned more about Maeve Brennan and her extended family (her nephew is Roddy Doyle) from this biography. There is a lot of info about her father who was close to De Valera. A good book though, lots of info on the New Yorker crowd.

[Daria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taking off across the ocean yet again and forced to abandon my growing library behind me, I leave off this biography at the point where Maeve moves to D.C. with her family. So I haven't actually gotten to her New Yorker days.

I can attest, however, that the first half of the book can also double as a Brief Social History of Ireland, an Introduction to Irish Vocabulary, and a Survey of Architectural Development in Suburban Dublin, 1918-1930. It's as if the writer has put in every single interesting fact she has come across in her research, and while yes, on some level it is all very interesting, it is also mostly just TMI.

An enlightening read if you're taking it piece by tiny piece, and also recommended for those who have already read Brennan's works. Bourke really places an emphasis on integrating Brennan's corpus into the biography - which is understandable, and probably important for an account of a writer's life. If only the integration wasn't so disorienting at times! For what it's worth, I did go out and buy The Springs of Affection and The Long-Winded Lady (both poor, out of print editions that they are!), so I'm looking forward to getting to know Brennan as a writer.

[Olga Vannucci · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unique and alone, she watched everybody,
Then typed what she saw to make up her stories.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the story of Maeve Brennan -- the involvement of her parents in the Irish Ireland and freedom movements, her childhood, the family's time in Washington and her amazing literary career in New York and eventual spiral to poverty and homelessness -- to be extremely interesting and engrossing.

After reading the book and doing independent research, I wish the book included more about her later years, specifically her mental health problems and nonexistent relationship with family, to complete her biography as fully as her early years are covered in the book. Also, through research I learned of her friendship with Truman Capote and the possibility that the character of Holly Golightly was based on Maeve -- an interesting aside.

[Molly Ferguson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was tough to get through. I'm sort of ashamed to have had such a tough time hacking through it, because Bourke's research was truly impeccable and there are some glimmering gorgeous sentences buried in the book that tell you about Maeve Brennan and who she was for her time. Part of the problem is that there is a long opening section about her parents before she is even born, which felt like it could have been shorter. Then, the "juicy" parts seemed skimmed through (her marriage, her mental illness, etc.) in favor of what Bourke could document. It's a fantastic exercise in research and interpretation, but not a lot of fun to read.

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

wonderful research went into this book which tells the life story of this fascinating but very troubled writer.

[Max Rasa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poignant