Council unveils plaque to “greatest Irish writer you’ve never heard of”

Dublin woman Maeve Brennan, whose rediscovered writings have won her worldwide recognition in the literary world, has been commemorated by a Dublin City Council Commemorative Plaque.

The plaque was unveiled by Lord Mayor Daithí de Róiste at 48 Cherryfield Avenue, Ranelagh, Brennan’s childhood home.

Brennan, once described as “the greatest Irish writer you never heard of,” was born in Dublin on 6th January 1917, the second of four children of the journalist Bob Brennan, who would go on to found the Irish Press.

Speaking at the unveiling, Lord Mayor of Dublin Daithí de Róiste said “did Maeve Brennan know her time would come?  That we would gather to pay tribute to her today at the house that inspired so much of her writing and became a character in so many of her stories, in the multi-cultural, forward looking city of Dublin, thirty years after she died in relative obscurity?  Like the great creative mind that she was, she would have reflected that time has a way of putting things to rights, of healing and rising above the humdrum to reach a higher level.”

After her father was selected as Ireland’s ambassador to Washington in 1934, Brennan completed her secondary and third level education in Washington and moved to New York to work in a library. Her literary talent was noticed by the editor of New Yorker magazine and contributed to the prestigious outlet for three decades

Brennan retreated into obscurity in her later years amid financial and mental health problems, and spent her last years in a home for the elderly in New York.

Following her death in 1993, her work was anthologised and recognised by a new generation of writers and critics, placing Maeve Brennan among the best Irish short-story writers since Joyce, and her works have been elevated into the canon of twentieth-century literature.

Her works include the short story collection In and Out of Never-Never Land, The Long-Winded Lady, which first appeared in the New Yorker as essays, The Springs of Affection, a short story collection set in Dublin, The Visitor, her unpublished Dublin-set novella, and The Rose Garden, a posthumous set of short stories set in the Hamptons that details a failing marriage.

“Through these re-publications, a new generation of readers embraced the themes she illuminated: migration, portability, remembrance, and the significance of material objects in building a home,” Dublin City Council said.

The decision to erect the plaque was made by the Dublin City Council Commemorations & Naming Committee.  Maeve O’Regan, owner of 48 Cherryfield Avenue, proposed that the plaque be erected.