Molly Keane

Who was Molly Keane?

Molly Keane was an Irish novelist and playwright. She grew up at Ballyrankin in County Wexford and was educated at a boarding school in Bray, County Wicklow. She married Bobby Keane, one of a Waterford squirearchical family in 1938 and had two daughters. She used her married name for her later novels, several of which have been adapted for television. Between 1928 and 1956, she wrote 11 novels, and some of her earlier plays, under the pseudonym M.J. Farrell. Molly was a member of Aosdána. Her husband died suddenly in 1946, and following the failure of a play she published nothing for twenty years. In 1981 Good Behaviour came out under her own name; the manuscript, which had languished in a drawer for many years, was lent to a visitor, the actress Peggy Ashcroft, who encouraged Keane to publish it. The novel was warmly received and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize.

After the death of her husband, Molly Keane moved to Ardmore, County Waterford, a place she knew well, and lived there with her two daughters, Sally and Virginia, until she died in 1996. She is buried beside the Church of Ireland church, almost in the centre of the village.