Edna O'Brien book's The Country Girls was banned by the Irish censor upon its publication in 1960. Maggie Armstrong examines why
Edna O’Brien, who died yesterday aged 93, had her books banned by the Irish censor and burned by priests in the 1960s. Maggie Armstrong examinesthat so sorely provoked the authorities? Banned by the Irish censor upon its publication in 1960, branded a “smear on Irish womanhood” by the Archbishop and burned by a priest, Edna O’Brien’s debut novel thrust her into the extremes of literary persecution.
Having eloped and moved to London, Edna O’Brien sat down to write her first novel in some Aisling jotters, writing furiously every day after she dropped her young boys to school.
After her mother’s death she found the book with offending passages struck out with black pen, while others in her small County Clare village heaped scorn on her family. “The postmistress…told my father that a fitting punishment would be for me to be kicked naked through the town”.
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