Pat O'Shea

Who was Pat O'Shea?

Pat O'Shea, was the pen name of Patricia Mary Shiels O'Shea, an award-winning and best-selling children's fiction writer. She was born in Galway and was the youngest of 5 children. Her first novel was the best-selling The Hounds of the Morrigan, which took 13 years to complete. It was finally published in 1985 by Oxford University Press, translated into five languages, and is still considered among the best classic children's books.

When she was sixteen she went to England. She worked in a bookshop. She began to write theatre plays in Manchester and got a scholarship from the British Art Council.

In the late 1960s her early theatre writing career proved unsuccessful, though it was supported by David Scase, director of the Library Theatre, Manchester and his successor Tony Colegate. She also tried writing for television, but that also failed to work out, so in 1969 she began to write short stories and poetry, as well as an unpublished comic novel.

By the early 1970s she began writing The Hounds of the Morrigan to please herself and close associates by producing something she could deem worthy of her favorite children's novels, but with little expectation of getting it published.