Pat O'Shea

Pat O'Shea was an Irish 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. O'Shea was born in the Bohermore area of Galway and attended Presentation National School and the Convent of Mercy Secondary School. She was the youngest of five children. Her mother died when O'Shea was a small child, and she and the other children were brought up by her older sister. At 16 she followed her siblings to England and decided to stay there, getting a job in a bookshop in Manchester. She began to write theatre plays and received a bursary in 1967 from the British Art Council. In 1969 she had begun to write short stories and poetry, as well as a comic novel (unpublished). By the early 1970s she began writing The Hounds of the Morrigan to please herself and family and friends, with little expectation of getting it published. It took O'Shea ten years to complete her novel. By 1985, it had already been translated into several languages. She married JJ (Jack) O'Shea in 1953, but they separated in 1962. They had one son, Jim. Pat O'Shea died in Manchester in 2007, at age 76.